The Mind's Eye Guide to Composition: Painless Photographic Compositions
By Bob Wayland
()
About this ebook
Related to The Mind's Eye Guide to Composition
Related ebooks
Photography Wisdom: The Psychology of Image Making Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLight for the Artist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Mindful Photographer: Awake in the World with a Camera Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlack & White: Metaphysics of photography Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Pictorial Composition and the Critical Judgment of Pictures Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Photo Album Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsComposition: The Anatomy of Picture Making Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Creative Image Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Magic of the Bokeh: Learn How to Create Wonderful Bokehs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTake Control, Go Manual Part 4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Digital Zone System: Taking Control from Capture to Print Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Capture One Pro 9: Mastering Raw Development, Image Processing, and Asset Management Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Capture the Magic: Train Your Eye, Improve Your Photographic Composition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Color Management for Digital Photography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Visual Palette: Defining Your Photographic Style Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Art Photographs by Richard Alighieri: Volume IV - Nature Photography Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhotography Wisdom: The Present Your Work Collection Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFraming the Shot: Developing Your Passion for Photography through the Eyes of the Women Who Know It Best Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Minimalist Photographer Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Photographic Lighting Simplified Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Poetic Landscapes & Mood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPassing by Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art, Science, and Craft of Great Landscape Photography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Facts of Light: The Qualities of Light Every Photographer Needs to Know Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhotography: The Art of Composition Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Fine Art Photography: Water, Ice & Fog: Photographic Techniques and the Art of Interpretation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Photography is An Art Form Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLearn It Well: Photography Basics for Serious Beginners Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Photography For You
Betty Page Confidential: Featuring Never-Before Seen Photographs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Book Of Legs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The iPhone Photography Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bloodbath Nation Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Wisconsin Death Trip Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Haunted New Orleans: History & Hauntings of the Crescent City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Through the Lens of Whiteness: Challenging Racialized Imagery in Pop Culture Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsExtreme Art Nudes: Artistic Erotic Photo Essays Far Outside of the Boudoir Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Conscious Creativity: Look, Connect, Create Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Let Us Now Praise Famous Men Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Photography Exercise Book: Training Your Eye to Shoot Like a Pro (250+ color photographs make it come to life) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeclutter Your Photo Life: Curating, Preserving, Organizing, and Sharing Your Photos Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPatterns in Nature: Why the Natural World Looks the Way It Does Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Photographer's Guide to Posing: Techniques to Flatter Everyone Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5On Photography Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bare Bones Camera Course for Film and Video Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Humans of New York: Stories Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Workin' It!: RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Edward's Menagerie: Dogs: 50 canine crochet patterns Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Ballet for Everybody: The Basics of Ballet for Beginners of all Ages Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Fifty Places to Hike Before You Die: Outdoor Experts Share the World's Greatest Destinations Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Photography Bible: A Complete Guide for the 21st Century Photographer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tree a Day: 365 of the World’s Most Majestic Trees Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFucked at Birth: Recalibrating the American Dream for the 2020s Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lost Towns of North Georgia Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCinematography: Third Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How the Other Half Lives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Collins Complete Photography Course Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Six Flags Over Georgia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Mind's Eye Guide to Composition
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The Mind's Eye Guide to Composition - Bob Wayland
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.
Albert Eίnsteίn
© James Robert Wayland 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for brief quotas in critical reviews, without the prior permission in writing of James Robert Wayland.
Contact:
Bob Wayland
P. O. Box 51805
Albuquerque, NM 87181
nmbobw@gmail.com
Web Site:
BWCognitivePhoto.com
Publisher:
BookBaby
ISBN: 9781619278738
Table of Contents
Preface
Organization of this book
Book One: Composition
1. First Images
2. Basic Forms
3. Scanning
4. Learning
5. Color
6. Perception of Depth
7. Guidelines
Book Two: Visual Signals and their
Processing
1. Detection
2. Perception
preliminary analysis
scanning
3. Analysis
scanning
driving forces
4. Color Vision
5; Depth Perception
Book Three: Technical References
1. Detection
2. Perception
connectionism
computational theory
Gestalt Theory
response functions
3. Color Vision
color phenomena
4. Depth Perception
5. Random Thoughts
Acknowledgments
Index
Is this book for you? How many times have you seen something beautiful, carefully composed a photo and taken the picture, only to discover that your masterpiece
looks like nothing special? Have you ever looked at a photograph that you took and asked, Why did I take this?
Have you ever wondered where the rules of composition come from? If the answer is YES to any question then you need this book.
Dedication
The women in my life have allowed me the leisure, the support that I needed to finish what I started so long ago in my quest for understanding visual art composition. My wife has taught me the necessity of careful and critical analysis coupled with an accuracy of phrase. My older daughter, Sarah, and her advanced training in cognitive science has been a great help in pointing me toward the current state of knowledge of visual perception. My younger daughter, Jennifer, has helped me to develop a joy that comes from creative endeavors and insights. She and my wife are deeply involved in scrapbooking, which helped me to understand the importance of having a story for each image I create. Clearly, this book is dedicated to these wonderful women.
Preface
When, as a teenager, I first started taking pictures, it was with wild abandon, madly pushing the shutter when anything made the mistake of being in front of me. Well, this was back in the ancient past where taking a picture involved film and all that went with it. Of course, I had only limited resources (mowing lawns and that sort of thing) and quickly realized that I had to get myself under control. Thus began my informal self-education of photographic processes, usually gained by studying carefully books on popular photography (Thank you John Shaw!). For me, it was heady stuff. After mastering the basics of exposure and which fixed lens to use, I ran into the mysterious brick wall of composition. It didn't take long to see that I needed an education in visual art composition; yes, the normal rules of composition, such as those associated with artistic visual images. But the rules had so many contradictions that I decided I was taking a course in advanced complexity theory. Having established that only a very small fraction of my images should be kept, I realized that I had to work very hard at making the best possible images, but I only had time to develop a set of quick and dirty rules. Of course, I got a lot of mediocre pictures. Then life got in the way of my photographic pursuits. But now I can accomplish what I started so long ago, this book completes what I began then.
When we first start perception and interpretation of what we are observing, normal physiological and psychological responses take over. This means that from a very early age, we are forming concepts of composition that guide our eye and interpretation of images; this is our outlook on the world around us, concepts that are unique to the individual. As we gain more and more knowledge, not only of artistic endeavors, but also from our experiences in the world, we form a unique set of compositional rules; perhaps it is better to call them guidelines. This forced me to ask a very important question: "What is the relationship of your psychological compositional rules (guidelines?) to those of formal art training? This book is my answer.
Let me digress just a little. It is impossible for me to learn or perform a new activity unless I have at least a rudimentary understanding of the underlying causes and principles. This book is my attempt to try to understand where our rules
of composition come from. It is my purpose to give you an understanding of how psychological processes influence composition in the visual arts, then to compare the psychological processes to conventional (read cultural) compositional rules
.
To begin to understand this process, we need to first think about perception. Recent developments in the mapping of mental activities (PIE, NMR, fNMR, etc.) allow us to begin to understand more clearly what the mind is doing with the incoming signals it receives from our sensory organs; yes-our eyes. The physical form of the incoming signals of light is converted into neural signals (that is, one form of electrical energy into another) What I will attempt to do in this book will be to provide you with an understanding of how our mind processes these signals and how to use this knowledge to make up good compositional guidelines.
No, I am not attempting to give a detailed description of the perception process of transforming the incoming signals into meaningful images, realize this is advance cognitive neuroscience, or more accurately in our case cognitive photography. Instead I will describe this process watching out for the key things involved. (Rather than bore you to death; this is done in the Part 2 for those of us who like to be bored.) The relationships of our mind's processes to establishing what makes a good composition will be put under the microscope.
How we look at art, including photography, has recently been studied in depth. All this has started to allow us to understand why we like certain images but it also tells us how viewers see our images and their beauty.
Of course, we all find certain books to be most useful. Some that have been especially helpful for me are books by Rudolf Arnheim and Robert Solso. Arnheim, in his books, The Power of the Center, Art and Visual Perception and Visual Thinking provide an understanding of the importance of art and its insight into the human condition. Solso gives great insight into the physiological processes and the psychological process of seeing. His book, Cognition and the Visual Arts, is particularly useful. I do not want to redo