Visual communications exams

Visual Processing

The process of obtaining awareness and understanding sensory data

Why is visual processing important

Our brains must find meaningful patterns in our visual environment in order to respond to it- This is fast and efficient

Bottom-up processing

driven by external stimuli- movement, shapes, contour, forms, color, contrast, depth

Top-down processing

Driven by prior knowledge and expectations

Working Memory

The meeting of bottom-up and top-down processing- comparing what we see to what we already know

Schemas

Mental frameworks used to classify and store information

Semiotics

the study of signs and symbols- The rules that govern encoding and decoding

Sign

Anything that refers to something other than itself

Signifier

physical properties of the sign (sounds, words, etc.)

Signed

what the sign & its signifiers refer to (ideas, actual objects, etc.)

What are the 3 types of signs

Icon, Index, Symbol

Icon

A sign in which the signifier has a physical resemblance to the signified

Index

Evidence of what is being represented, evidence of signified

- where there's smoke there's fire

Symbol

There is no connection between the signifier and the signified other than that which is culturally learned

Codes

Combinations of signs that get their meanings from their relationships with other signs

- Signs gain meaning when put in relationships with one another

- sign's meaning depends on the code within which it is situated

Gestalt principles

principles by which people tend to organize visual elements into groups or unified wholes

- The relationship between different elements or objects creates meaning

What are the gestalt principles

Continuation, similarity, closure, proximity, symmetry, figure and ground, anomaly

Cognitive load

The demands made on working memory

Continuation

Viewers follow lines and infer a relationship between elements

Similarity

Similar objects have a relationship

Closure

if enough of the shape is there, the viewer will infer completion

Proximity

Elements near each other are percieved as having a relationship

Symmetry

Symmetry may invite the viewer to view parts as a whole, may draw in the viewer's attention

Figure and ground

The viewer will identify familiar shapes or patterns and perceive the rest of the image as background

Anomaly

When something breaks a pattern, it draws attention

Visual rhetoric

The ways that you persuade people and get your ideas across, also knowing about the available means of persuasion

Denotations

What is literally referred to

- Photos are solely denotative

Connotations

The cultural meaning (ex: child=innocence)

W.E.B. Dubois

Sociologist and civil rights activist

- first african american to get a PHD from harvard

- 1900 world's fair (paris)

- "the exhibit of American Negroes"

Tropes

Figurative language or figurative speech

- rhetorical devices/motifs

- way of understanding

Visual hierarchy

Using design elements to guide the reader's eye to what is most important

- size, color, location, etc.

Typographic Hierarchies

headings, subheadings, body copy

- can be used to communicate importance or establish focal points that guide the order in which viewers take in elements

Metaphor

understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another

- at the heart of the way we understand the world

Vehicle (metaphor)

The thing from which attributes are borrowed

- concrete; serve to explain

Tenor (metaphor)

The thing to which the attributes (of the vehicle) are applied

- abstract; unknown

Visual hierarchy

uses design elements to guide readers eyes to what is most important

- size, color, location, etc

Serifs

A small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter

Sans serif

without 'serifs'

Leading

vertical line spacing, space between lines of text

Tracking

character spacing, overall space between characters

Kerning

adjusting the space between specific characters, different letters have different spacing

Typeface

design, style, and aesthetic qualities of a set of characters

- EX: times new roman

Font

a specific instance of a typeface that includes variation in size (12-point), weight (bold,light,etc), slope (italic), etc

Typeface as a medium

the medium is the message

- typefaces legibility

- typeface as a form of communication

Helvetica

ubiquitous, it is a given

Politics of helvetica

- "international style"

- modernist design for "openness & democracy"

- uniformity and legibility

- efficiency

- "neutral", the font has no meaning- meaning should be the text not the typeface

- latin script, alphabet

- efficiency as connotation

- association with powerful institutions

Aesthetics are political

- typefaces can be like an anthem or a flag

- politics of capitalization

Color theory

a body of knowledge describing the behavior of colors around a circle, which shows the relationships between primary, secondary, and tertiary colorss

Color palette

a chosen set of colors to use in a design

Hue

color

Value

light/dark (ranging from black to white)

Saturation

intensity

Monochromatic

one "hue" that varies in saturation and value

Complimentary

opposite on the wheel, high-contrast and attention grabbing

Analogous

2-5 adjacent colors on the wheel, balance and harmony

Triadic

3 colors evenly spaced on the wheel, rich and vibrant

Tetradic

4 colors that form a rectangle

Rule of thirds

puts objects of focus on one of three lines or ideally at an intersection

Rule of odds

having an odd number of items is more visually interesting than an even number

Implied movement

"leading lines" can create a sense of movement

- diagonal lines = movement

Other strategies

- framing within a photograph/image

- contrast between figure and ground

- filling the frame

- center the dominant eye

- patterns

- symmetry

Data visualization

allows experts to manage large amounts of data

- data aggregation

- patterns and relationship

- simplification

- visual representation of data for citizens and consumers

- easy to understand for the non expert

Infographics

- information maps

- variety of visual elements

- narrative component

- easy to understand for the non expert

Camera Obscura

Dark chamber, rays of light pass through a small hole into a dark space resulting in an inverted and reversed projection of the view outside

pinhole camera

-13th and 14th century: used by scientists to study solar eclipses

- 15th century: used for creating accurate drawings

Daguerrotype

-1839: becomes first publicly available photographic process

- image is captured on a metal plate (silver)

- 1800s: development of film

Andre Bazin

- Humans have an appetite for illusion

- The duplication of the world outside

Mechanical reproduction

between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man

Photographic Realism

- Photography enjoys a certain advantage in virtue of this transference of reality from the thing to its reproduction

- The photographic image is the object itself

New role

Painting moves away from realism

Henri Cartier Bresson

- decisive movement

- A split second that reveals the larger truth of a situation

- Concept that shaped modern "street photography" and "photojournalism"

Candid photography

- spontaneous photography or snap shooting

- photographs that aren't posed

- captures natural expressions and moments

Photojournalism

Journalism that uses images to tell a news story.

- Usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video.

Photography's Paradox

Since the 20th Century, photography has, more than any other medium, exposed violence—made violence visible—to millions of people all over the globe

- seeing has not necessarily translate into believing, caring, or acting

Human Rights

- new and artificial

- It is only in the late 20th century that the 'universal human rights' takes hold

- The modern human-rights movement grew out of shame and terror regarding atrocities

Depicting Absence (Linfield)

- What, then does a person with human rights look like? Well, like a person: that's it.

- What photographers can do peculiarly well is to show how those without such rights look, and what the absence of such rights does to a person.

Photography & Human Rights

- iconicity and Indexicality

- Photographs bring home the reality of physical suffering with a literalness and an irrefutability that few media can

- Physical cruelty and our vulnerability to it

Non-rational

Rational arguments are not enough to further human rights

- The violation of the human body... has a visceral, irrational, and irrevocable quality about it

When Perpetrators TakePictures

Undermines a basic tenet of photojournalism: that perpetrators seek to hide the crimes they commit and that exposing those crimes will lead to justice.

- Celebrate cruelty rather than condemn it

- part of oppression of power

Ambient Light

Available light that is not supplied by the photographer

- You can use filters and/or flashes to adjust for this.

- neutral density filter

Camera basics

- shutter speed

- ISO

- aperture

Shutter speed

Length of exposure... how long the film or sensor is exposed

- Lower shutter speeds make brighter photos, but don't capture motion sharply

ISO

Sensitivity of film or digital equivalent

- Lower sensitivity (100) is better for lots of ambient light

- Higher sensitivity (3200) is better for lower light situations

- Higher sensitivity makes image grainier

Aperture

Size of the "hole" created by the shutter.

- Larger hole, more light

-Smaller hole, less light

Depth of Field

How in focus your photograph is from the front to back

- Larger the aperture, shallower the depth of field (blurrier background)

Mis-en-Scène

everything that appears before the camera

• sets, props, costumes, lighting

Cinematography

cinematographer-director of photography

• camera movement, angles, distance from objects, lighting, etc

Editing

how the individual shots are put together, manipulation of time and space

• long takes, short takes, etc

Classical cutting

A sequence of shots is determined by a scenes dramatic and emotional emphasis rather than by physical action alone

Continuity editing

A type of editing in which the shots are arranged in to preserve the fluidity of action without showing it all

Parallel editing/cross cutting

alternating of shots from two sequences, often n different locales, suggesting that they are taking place simultaneously

Shot/reverse shot

one character is shown looking at another off screen, with a cut of the other looking back

Types of shots

• establishing shot

• reverse angle shot

• reaction shot

• point of view shot

• tracking shot 

Establishing shot

establishes location, used at the beginning of a scene/story to establish context of the action

Reverse angle shot

common in dialogue, a shot taken from an angle 180 degrees opposed (or close to it) from the pervious shot

Reaction shot

A cut to a shot of a characters reaction to the content of the previous shot

Point of view shot (POV)

Any shot that is taken from the vantage point of a character in the film, showing what the character sees

Tracking shot

A mobile framing that travels through space forward, backward, or latteraly

Jump cut

An abrupt transition between shots, sometimes deliberate, which is disorienting in terms of time or space

Surrealism

“Un Chien Analou”(1929), directed by Salvador Dalí and Luis Bruñuel