DEFINITION OF THE VISUAL LANGUAGE

Why study the visual language instead of “the rules of composition”?

A. Because if we don’t understand why rules work, we won’t know when to apply them and when to break them.

1. The rule of thirds

2. Eye level framing

3. Frame within a frame

4. Diagonals

5. Leading lines

6. Fill the frame

7. Center the dominant eye

8. Get close

9. Find a simple background

10. Portrait cropping rules

There are three essential components to the visual language

1. Light

2. The eye

3. The brain 

Light:

Different colors have different frequencies and different temperatures.
Different colors are absorbed by different substances. The colors our eyes see are the ones that were not absorbed.

The eye:

Rods perceive the amount of light and cones distinguish between colors.

Where there is no light, we cannot see. This simply reflects the biological functioning of our eyes, mainly the retina, which is a nerve that is sensitive to light.

TECHNICAL INFORMATION

How many colors can the eye see?

• Approximately 1,000,000

How much detail can the eye see?

• Technically, 120 pixels per degree of arc. That’s a lot, but not infinite and we see things that are closer better.

How much light can the eye see?

• The range of wavelengths the human eye can typically detect range from 380 to 700 nanometers. The total range of light in a scene is often referred to as the “dynamic range”.

Human vision / Dog vision

Human vision

• 1 million colors

• High detail (20/20)

• Mediocre night vision

• 180 degree vision

Dog vision

• 10,000 colors

• Low detail (20/75)

• Good night vision

• 240 degree vision

Our eyes perceive two kinds of information:

ght and color. Therefore, our brain can distinguish between things that have different amounts of light or color. This is called:

1. Light contrast

2. Chromatic contrast 

The laws of physics and biology make us look first at some things and later at others. They make us feel a certain way when we see one color or shape and another way when we see a different color or shape. Although part of our reaction to what we see depends on our socio-cultural formation and context, a very large part of it is purely biological.

Our brain’s mission

The key function of our brain is understanding what is around us.
a. The faster it understands things, the more likely we are to survive.
b. The more efficiently the brain uses our energy, the more is available for the rest of the body or for more complex uses of the brain.

i. The optimal way of understanding what is around us for the brain to organize things into “categories” such as “plant”, “tree”, “leaf”, etc. Otherwise our brain would have to process everything it ever encounters as a new object or occurrence and it would be extremely time and energy consuming.

ii. As a result, images that are easily “readable” are pleasurable to our brain. On the other hand, images for which our brain has to think a lot to understand where to look or what the image is trying to communicate are images that are uncomfortable to look at.

Because of the fact that we only see well in the center and because our brain needs to understand things as quickly as possible, it actually creates or “paints” many of the things we think we see. That is why impressionist paintings look so realistic and why sometimes we think an object is a cat, for example, but then we realize that it is a bag.

Our senses and the importance of contrast

Our senses all distinguish between one thing and another by some sort of difference. Visually speaking, this difference is called contrast, but we can apply this to any of the senses. As a result, our brain likes things that are clearly different or clearly similar. What it doesn’t like is a mixture of things that are both similar and different.

Over simplicity = bad

Lastly, for some reason that I do not yet fully understand, our brain does not like visually boring images. Simplicity is essential for a good photograph because our brain needs to be able to easily categorize and distinguish between subjects in the image, but for some reason simplicity can be excessive, such as the image on this page. To avoid an excessively simple image, our eye has to be able to “roam”, to move around the photo so as not to feel “trapped