Contents
This explains why your photos say a lot about you.
Self-knowledge
Did you know that photography can serve you for your personal growth and development beyond immortalizing certain moments? The expert and professor of photography Braulio Moreno, reveals how and why
There are two fundamental issues that help improve photographs and have more fun taking them, which are the self-knowledge and the importance of knowing the visual language.
Self-knowledge is the knowledge of oneself, and it is a concept that is related to the personal development and the psychology. It is associated with personal emotions, self-esteem and even the search for happiness.
And how does knowledge influence photography? Really every time you take a photograph you are choosing something specific to photograph, you decide which elements you want to appear and which ones not, you choose a certain point of view, an angle and a distance from the photographed subject, etc. Let’s say that the photographs are not taken on the fly with the camera while they are swarming around, but that we create them from the decisions we make in the capture. Whether you are aware or not, both what you photograph and the way you do it respond to your personal interests and the way you see the world. We really photograph what we are.
Being aware of this is something of vital importance in the photographic learning. Since if you are not discovering your motivations and personal tastes, it is easy to dedicate yourself to copying other looks, those of those photographs or photographers that you like. But then you will be seeing life from the eyes of others.
At first it is normal to copy or try to imitate images that we like of other people, but if it does not evolve, we lose the opportunity to show things from our personal point of view. Thus self-knowledge is essential.
An exercise to get to know yourself better
To work on self-knowledge, I recommend doing a simple exercise at Theimagen.com. It consists of creating a folder on the computer (or it can be physical) called, for example, «Photo Library». In it, you should save the photographs that you like the most, both yours and that of other people. The only requirement they must meet is that you like them, even if you don’t know the specific reason. You can even print these photos at a small size, so it is more manageable to see them together.
When you have been saving photos in it for a while and you can take some time for yourself, review the images. You sure discover repeating themes and patterns. They can be questions such as whether people appear or not, if these people are posing or not, if they appear very close in the foreground or there is always a certain distance, if recurring themes appear (flowers, buildings, abandoned things, …), if many are they black and white or color, what kind of colors, etc.
Discovering these issues will improve your self-knowledge, and that is something that you can apply to your next captures and naturally to your personal life. You will thus be photographing things that you know you like and the way you like them, being true to your own gaze, not just to other people’s.
This is how I discovered the type of photos that I like the most, proposing visual games:
Or trying to convey through imagination:
In your images you speak visually
In the same way that in a text we express ourselves with words, in an image we express ourselves with visual elements. Therefore, knowing the visual language it is a key factor to improve your images.
Since we are children they teach us many aspects of verbal language, which we use when speaking or writing, but unfortunately we are shown very little of visual language. But this is also very broad and although personal factors come into play in the “reading” of an image, people interpret what appears in them in a very similar way.
So if you go discovering how the elements that appear in the images are interpreted, You can apply it to get more effective images that better convey what you would like to show.
Not only do the elements that appear in it affect the interpretation of an image, but also where they appear (in the center, on one side, etc.), their size in the frame, the relationship between them and many other aspects such as light, colors, etc.
The visual language is very broad, but here I would like to focus on how we perceive images and how imagery can help you. Gestalt psychology.
Visual perception and Gestalt
We perceive images through our eyes, but also through our brain. But how does our visual perception really work? Gestalt psychologists were the first to identify several repeating patterns of perception, developing a series of principles that can be very interesting to improve your photographs.
The basic principle says that: «We perceive the image as a whole and we do not construct it only from its different parts. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Let’s look at the most important principles and how they can help you.
Principle of simplicity. Our brain understands and remembers images with few elements more easily. This is what explains that minimalist photography works very well and attracts attention quickly, as in this example:
This principle also tells us that the brain makes an abstraction of the elements that make up the image, simplifying its interpretation. From this image our brain is left with the main elements: train tracks and a person, the rest of the details would require a more leisurely reading:
Principle of proximity. This principle indicates that it is easier for the brain to perceive nearby elements as related better than if they are separated.
In the photograph you can also use it to establish relationships, for example as in the case of the union of this girl and her dog:
However, if they are further apart, that relationship is lost and even if it really exists, we do not interpret it as such:
In short, the proximity of elements creates a relationship between them.
Principle of completeness or closure. Our brain tends to complete an image even though it is not complete:
For example, in this photograph our eye tries to complete the part that is not shown in the image:
Principle of continuity. This principle explains that our brain tends to continue the shapes or lines beyond the frame of the frame.
In the following image, our brain interprets the continuity of the road, which tends to imagine it giving depth to it, in addition to curiosity that invites us to ask ourselves: “What will there be a little further?”
This photograph also leads us to ask ourselves questions such as: “Who is this person?”
Principle of figure and ground or segregation. Our brain tends to identify a figure and a background in a scene.
Furthermore, something that is a figure cannot be a background. That is why the following image is uncomfortable for our brain. Is it a cup or does it represent faces? What is the figure and what is the background? You can’t see both at the same time:
And when the figure and the background are not easily recognized, the brain tries to identify them:
This can be used to create more ambiguous images, where figure and background are not so clear, which will make our brain have to stop on them.
Take control of your images
These principles explained in the article offer interesting aspects of perception that can be used to improve your photographs. Although what will be a turning point is that you are aware that it is you who creates the images. The reality you are trying to capture in your photographs is out there, but you decide how to display it.
Without a doubt, improving your self-knowledge will help create images with which you feel comfortable and find your own vision, and ultimately, it will be positive for your personal development.
About the Author…
- Braulio Moreno has been in photography for more than 20 years. He is the creator of TheImagen.com.