Analysing Process.

  I never new there was so much Psychology involved in such a simple act as taking a photo but apparently there's more going on in your head then you'd think. I've already looked at Gestalt Theory and how this effects photography but theirs also a need to understand the psychology of perception to gain more of an insight into the inner workings of the mind when composing an image. I never thought I'd be considering getting a psychologist in to explain why I take photos the way I do, hell I never understood half of what I learnt about the psychology of the mind in my A-levels and I've killed quiet a few brain cells since then so what hope of getting my head round it now.

   One of the best if not the main theories on Perception to look at was produced by Hermann von Helmholtz, in his theory he concluded after looking at the construction of the eye it was optically poor which meant the information gathered through it wasn't very good and therefore with this alone vision was impossible. Straight off to me this sounds a little crazy because even though I where glasses what I can see through my eyes is pretty good and I don't see how it could be better but he concluded that vision was the result of unconscious inference, in other words our brain fills in the gaps in the images formed from the eye by using assumptions and conclusions produced from previous experience of similar scenes. This idea would seem to be backed up by looking at visual illusions, for example look at the image below.



Illusory Necker Cube

What you see is a three dimensional square but it isn't really there, your mind is filling in the gaps in between the circles and lines to produce a complete image from your previous experiences, this is where perception links back to the Law of Closure in Gestalt Theory.

   So I here you asking what bearing does this idea have on photography, well the answer to me is that if you can understand how to control perception you can create much stronger imagery and make elements within your photos seem more natural and easier on the viewers eye. Or on the other hand I could have completely the wrong end of the stick and I'm just rambling again, either way the one thing I do know for sure is I still don't really get Psychology and I'm pretty sure I never will. I thing I'd like to get back to some photography now.