The gap between the experience and the image
When we look at photographs we have taken, we carry our personal emotional experience into the image –
So we can look at an photograph we have taken and think it looks amazing, we have reference of things outside the frame that a viewer does not – while these might be other visual aspects like a high cliff, a car crash etc. there are other factors like sensations like heat or cold - smell, touch and a third spatial dimension that we carry into the image.
But an audience can only see what is actually in the image - they have no real experience. When we look at our images we need to stand back and look critically at what is actually in the image not what we think is in the image.
A good photographer is able to identify the key visual aspect of the scene to convey the meaning they are after - they understand aesthetic devices, the syntax of the medium and how to achieve this through the technical controls of the medium that are working with.
Aesthetics is the study of what images look like and how we visually read them, and more importantly how we can construct them - in this resource it crosses over with photographic syntax.
We might like to think of this as the design of the image or the composition.
In recent years, in contemporary art, there has been more emphasis placed on theoretical issues and what images mean with aesthetics relegated as a rather unfashionable given that just happens. So ironically there is a generation of artists some of whom know little about image design and colour theories. However images are things we look at and the information in effects us one way or another. We tend to find that artists who make visually stimulating images have a good understanding and sense of aesthetics and apply this in their work. |
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There are many different systems devised as a means to design images and just as many ways to look at photographs - this resource will introduce some of these.
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