How Do We See?

Our eyes have been reduced to instruments with which to identify and to measure; hence we suffer a paucity of ideas that can be expressed in images and an incapacity to discover meaning in what we see.

Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception, p. 1

Shortly after we get our first camera we come to realize that our eye does not see the same as the camera. Otherwise, how could we have spent the whole day photographing our friend and never even noticed the blemish that is now so prominently displayed on the computer screen?

After a short while of practice though we are noticing immediately those distracting power lines and trying to do something about it. We move our subjects or ourselves in order to not have offending objects in the background growing out of their heads. As I said, this initial adjustment take places quite rapidly but is that all there is? Absolutely not! Let's look at some of the properties of our vision system.

From the day we are born, we start learning how to use our vision and by the time we are young adults we psychologically have vision mastered to the point we don't even think about it, we just see. But what has been the result of our training?

The magician exploits our vision in order to perform the magic trick. And what is described as sleight of hand should be referred to as sleight of eye since it is the eye that is being deceived.

Most of us think that we see three dimensionally. After all, we were taught that binocular vision helps us see depth. But what about all those prey animals out there with eyes prominently on the sides of their heads? Do they run their noses into food? And what about the times that those predators with binocular vision attempt to catch them? Don't the prey animals usually get away? That would be kind of hard to do if they didn't have any sense of depth. What about people that only have vision in one eye?

It seems that all creatures with vision, regardless of handicap, get along quite well in three dimensional space. But does that mean that we see three dimensionally? There is an argument for binocular vision providing depth perception but anything beyond a few feet can not be attributed to binocular vision.

No, our eye, or better said, our retina receives a two dimensional representation of the three dimensional scene we are gazing upon and our brain construct a three dimensional perception of the scene based on visual cues in that scene.

Vision is truly the creative understanding of reality and human vision is incredibly dynamic. Consider the drawing below.

Many of us will automatically determine that it is a drawing of a face. But is it a face? There are no lines to contain the cheeks and chin. Nothing tells us where the crown of the head ends and the background begins. Yet, determining it is a face is a normal conclusion for us. What has our eye and brain done to accomplish that?

The study of composition is really the study of how eye and brain react to visual stimuli. And once we start to understand how they work we can approach our art from a position of creativity and feeling and know how to communicate that message visually.

Our vision will be the common theme in this blog as we explore elements of composition. We'll stay away from specific formulas and rules except to discover what those formulas or rules are trying to accomplish.

Next week – balance.