Psychology and composition

I've been interested in psychology for a long time and I'm especially interested in how it relates to photography. In this case it's composition and why certain compositional elements are very effective.

In this short podcast I'll do my best to explain my understanding of seven elements:

1. Proximity
2. Similarity
3. Continuity
4. Closure
5. Figure-ground
6. Symmetry and Order
7. Common fate

While I don't expect these insights to revolutionise your photography, it might give you pause for thought about which elements are around you and how you can use them in your photographs.

Enjoy the podcast!

It's time for another podcast...

Transcript

>> Speaker A: 0:17

Hello again. I, came across an article earlier today, actually, about, Gestalt. I can never say that properly, but, gestalt psychology. And it was to do with how we perceive things, either being part of a group or being separate. And it struck me that this is very much what we do, or a large part of what we do when we're looking at composition. Because what we tend to do, I, mean, the primary thing of composition is to make it clear what our subject is. Perhaps put the subject in some kind of a context, if that's relevant. Or maybe to insert the subject into some kind of situation. So that would be, the kind of, photograph where we trying to create moods. So an, example of that is to have a pretty much a black image, which is somebody's face, or maybe even part of their face over in one side of the image. So that has a certain atmosphere to it. And some of these things apply, some don't, from what I was reading. But the thing I was particularly interested in is how we use different elements within the photograph to create a story. I'm a big believer in the visual storyteller. it's something I talk about a lot. And I think if you approach your photography that way, it makes things much simpler. It becomes very clear, what your subject is, and it becomes, at least in my opinion, very clear. What also needs to be part of that particular photograph. And things that don't form part of that story are the things that go. And how we group things is an important aspect of that. And that's really what I want to talk about. So the article that I found had seven different ways of grouping and what it's doing. It's basically looking at how we perceive things as being in a group. And I'm waving my air quotes about here. and it is all about perception. So they may be in a group together, they may not be in a group together. But what we'll do when we see a number of objects, depending on exactly how they're situated, how they're moving, we will make an interpretation about whether or not they belong together. And that, of course, is something that we do when, or it's one aspect of composition. When you get into, composing photographs. So rather than ramble a little bit, I'm going to dive straight in. So the first thing is proximity. So objects that are close together are, generally perceived as being part of group. And objects that are further, away are, generally perceived as being separate. So that, I think, is pretty straightforward. And it's something we can use when we're thinking composition, when we're composing our image, how we grouping the different elements, if they're people, for example, or animals, it might be. So again, with the wildlife, context, it might be a group of, let's say deer, and or antelope. And separate from them would be a predator that's stalking them. That might be a way of using those groupings. But just in the way that we arrange the animals in that particular image. That will lead the observer to automatically start coming to certain conclusions about who's with who. So that's the first one. So that's proximity. The second one is similarity. So again, we tend to. Where there's a group of objects where some of them are similar, we'll tend to assume they're together. And where others might be a different group. Ah, and again, a group of something different. So one example is men and women. If they tend to be grouped together, let's say a larger group of men and women. But the sort of men are sort of one side, women or the other. That is one potential way of just subconsciously setting up groups so that all of the men are one group, all of the women are another group. So again, you can apply that to any kind of context you like. So an obvious one that springs to my mind is if you're photographing sports. Because obviously the people in one team, will be dressed the same. They have their. Their kit, their strip. And the group that form the other team, they have different strips. So these might seem very obvious. But I think it's nice to kind of dive into these a little bit because I think it helps us once we sort of understart understanding the psychology. then why things. Excuse me. Why things work the way they do becomes a bit more obvious. So if you're not into psychology, I apologise. That's what this one's about. Okay. The next one is continuity. And that essentially refers to elements that are on a line or a curve. We perceive them as being related. And the obvious application for that, in composition are leading lines. So if we're using leading lines, we will generally have a line, a continuity, usually of objects that are similar. So we've got that combination of elements, from the psychological standpoint. And leading lines are a great way of taking somebody on a journey through your image from a starting point, whether that, might be in the foreground. And taking them all the way through to your subject. So this is why leading lines are so effective or part of it, because it just connects with the way we're psychologically, programmed to group things together. So that's continuity. The next one is closure. So closure is simply where we are looking to fill in the missing parts. So if we have something that is now, It might be a curve. So if you've got a big curve line. I'm just trying to think of an example actually, but a curved line, but it's not totally complete. We'll try and find elements in the image to can, to just complete that picture. We kind of like things to be tidy. We like to finish, up, ah, finish up shapes that are, suggested to us in the image. So again, how you use elements within a photograph, if you've got a shape that's almost complete, there might be other things you can put in there. And the mind will certainly try to reorder things so that that shape is complete. The next one is, Figure and ground. So. Or figure hyphen ground. This is how we perceive objects as being in the foreground or the background. And A good example of that is if you know the vars faces kind of graphic thing. So M there's a shape and on the one hand it could be two profiles. One face looking at another in profile, but in the middle of them there's another shape that looks a lot like a vase. So what are you looking at? A vase or two profiles. So how we work that out is deciding what's in the foreground and what's in the background. So for example, if we decide that the vase is in the foreground, then that's what we're looking at. We're looking at the vase and the face shapes are simply the resulting shape of having that vase in the foreground. It's the resulting shape of how the background looks conversed. If there's actually two people looking at one another, if it's two silhouettes in profile, then the vase is the background. So I'm hoping this is making, ah, sense. So it does mean though, when you're constructing, if you want to do something, a little more abstract, think about how you're using foreground and background. Can the viewer, ah, switch foreground and background and still have an object that makes sense? another one that springs to mind and I don't know if you would have seen this, but, this is craters on the moon. When they look a certain way, we know they're a crater because of the shading which areas are dark, which are light. But mentally, you can kind of flip them. So that rather than being a crater, rather than being a hole, they're actually a mound. So that bright area is actually a high point. Rather than the sort of internal part of the, crater, it's now the outside part of, a lump on the surface. So this is how we can create images that kind of mess with. Mess with the viewer's head a little bit by introducing those, elements. Okay, the next one is called, symmetry and order. So this is where you have things that are symmetrical. They tend to be associated, seen as a group. and so as an example of that you might have. I'm just going to use an example I found in front of me, just a pair of brackets. The first pair, though, is a square bracket and a curly bracket. The second pair are two curly brackets. And what we would tend to do, we would tend to group together the curly brackets. Yes. They actually aren't identical because one would be the opposite of the other. There's an outer, sort of left hand bracket, right hand bracket. So they'd look slightly different. but because they're the same basic shape, we will. And they're symmetrical, basically. that's what we will group together. So again, in your photography, you may have situations where you do have repeating shapes. You have, elements that are symmetrical. Think about how you use those here. I'm thinking of maybe, in a city. It could be lampposts, maybe lamp post on opposite side of the street. So they're the same sort of style, but, sort of one is the mirror of the other, but there is symmetry to them. So again, when you're thinking about these things, think about places that you go, where you're taking your photographs. And the chances are once you begin to look, you'll start seeing a lot of symmetry all around you because it. It is all around us, basically. So you can use that as a compositional, element in your photographs. And then the final one is called common fate. And that's just where objects are moving. If they tend to be moving together, as in the same way, we'll tend to group them. again, so that might be fish or, you know, any, any place where you have movement going on. So that's, again, just a. That's something that our brain will do as a way of keeping things in order and keeping things making, sense to the brain. So just to recap, the seven, elements, basically that I've been talking about are first of all proximity. So that That's where. Where we have objects that are close together we'll tend to see them as a group. So the example I gave there was a group of antelope perhaps being stalked by a line. If we just looked at that picture with the antelope on one side and the line on the other we would obviously group antelope together. And as I've talked about the other aspects as well, things like the things being essentially the same looking similar. So similarity, which is the second one, that's also a way of putting things together even if they're not necessarily standing in a group together. But you might have for example, people from a team wearing the same uniforms or the same type of animal, if there's a mix of animals, so grazing. So that's one wildlife example of that. we'll tend to see animals of the same species because they are similar as being part of one group and animals of other species being of separate groups. Even though In the natural world you do get these M symbionic relationships between animals, where they work together to warn of predators in the area, that kind of thing. continuity is one that you're probably very familiar with, that is leading lines. And obviously again you might be using other elements. So Similarity again, because if you've got a curved line with objects on it, if the objects look the same or similar, that gives a very natural leading line. But that doesn't have to be the way leading lines work. But you have objects basically on a curve or a line to get those. What is called in this situation continuity. Then there's closure. So I was talking about that as closing the shape. An example I've seen here actually is if you look at the World Wildlife Fund logo it's actually a bunch of black on white shapes now. But when we look at those shapes what we see is panda. But in fact that's not a panda if you see what I mean. It's actually a bunch of black blobs on a white background. And Another example, if you remember the old IBM logo which had those. So it's capitalised IBM in blue but had all those horizontal white lines through it. So basically what it's doing is slicing up the logo. But what we'll do in our mind is to kind of fill in the blanks and complete it. So our brains are very, very good at recognising patterns. another one I've seen fairly regularly, actually, is, the t shirt, where I can't actually remember what the phrase is, but it's something like, smart people will understand this. And a lot of the letters have been replaced with numbers, but we fill in the gaps because we recognise the patterns, we recognise the pattern of the word and therefore we can reconstruct these words even though, letters are missing. So again, in your composition, how do we apply that to composition? Well, we can just think in terms of incomplete shapes and have elements within the photograph that suggest the shape, even though the shape isn't complete. Because what our minds will do is to complete that shape and how it looks. so that one's called closure. And then we've got, figure, ground, which is where I was talking about that, example. So it's how we separate foreground and background. So the example I gave was the sort of very famous picture. What do you see? Is it a vase or is it two, faces in silhouette, in profile. So that is known as figure ground. Then we have number six, symmetry and order. So again, we'll tend to use symmetry. So here I was talking about the brackets, where you've got a square and a curly, you know, left hand square, right hand curly versus a left hand curly, right hand curly. we will tend to group, automatically group the two curly brackets together, even though they're opposites, because they create symmetry. So again, the example I gave was using lampposts in an urban scene. But I'm sure there are many others that, you can think of. So symmetry is very important, order is very important. And then finally, I just spoke about common, it's called common fate, and that's where objects moving in the same direction will be perceived as a group when we're watching them, whether or not they are. So I don't know if you found that interesting. I'm not sure I've explained it that well, but, hopefully it's given you some ideas. But I always like to understand. I do get quite interested in psychology, so I will, definitely put my hand up to that one. So I'm quite curious. And part of psychology for me is about how our brains work and why we do the things we do. And it's interesting to me as a photographer to look at what I see as elements of composition and see why they work. Why do leading lines work? Does it have to be a line? Does it have to be a solid line? No, it doesn't. It can be a selection of objects, you know, how does that all work? And it's simply because the way our brains are designed, the way our minds work. we look for symmetry, we look for order, and if it isn't exactly there, we'll tend to fill in the gaps ourselves. So when you are thinking composition, and it doesn't really matter what you're doing, it could be just a straightforward scene, or it could be something a little more, a little different, a little more atmospheric, say. But have a think about what are the elements you're using? Are you using similarity, are you using continuity? Are you using symmetry? how you using foreground and background? Can you do something a bit more creative with them? So I think applying these kind of, or this kind of thinking to what we're doing is another way that we can play around with our photography, play around with the creative aspects of it, and maybe produce some really interesting results, as a result of doing that. So it's been a shorter podcast than usual, but hopefully that's okay and maybe that's given you a bit of food for thought. there are some articles I'm just going to just see if I can find, yeah, the interaction design foundation is a group that has quite an interesting article on gestalt, principles. Apologise if I pronounce that badly. And yeah, if it's something you're interested in, it actually goes into a few more than I've covered. It actually goes through twelve, a total of twelve different aspects. So if that's something that interests you, that's ah, a good place to look. Okay, thanks for your time and I'll speak to you again in the next podcast. Bye for now. Just before I go, I wanted to remind you that first, of all I have an offer running with my free download. So if you go onto the website and there's a link at the bottom of the description of this particular podcast, and that will take you to a link, where you can give me your email, I will send you a PDF, which is ten simple steps to improve your photography today. So it includes the kind of things that I talk about in the podcast. So it's all there in black and white. With some examples, you can see what's going on. And also remember I offer online photography courses. I do fine art. If you haven't checked out my galleries, please do. The links are again below the description of the podcast. And don't forget to help me out. So you're welcome to subscribe both to the podcast, and you can become a member of my Patreon membership and, join me there. So, in that membership, you get, access to me. and also you get advance notice of things that are coming up. 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