Image (visual)

“ From the image as testimony, as literacy destined it to be, to the image as pretext for new experiences-medium of visual relativity and questionable morality- everything, and more, is possible. Images can mediate in fast developing situations- transactions, exchange of information, conflicts-better than words can. They are free of the extra burden words bear and allow for global and detailed local interpretation. Electronic processing of digital photography supports comparison, as well as manipulation, of images in view of unprecedented human experiences requiring such functions. ”

“ If we compare the picture on the glass screen of the camera when the camera is out of focus with the visual impressions of the mind when the eye is out of focus, there will be found to be a great difference between them. ”

“ What chiefly concerns us here is the fact that the pictures on our retinas are flat, of two dimensions, the same as the canvas on which we paint. If you examine these visual pictures without any prejudice, as one may with a camera obscura, you will see that they are composed of masses of colour in infinite variety and complexity, of different shapes and gradations, and with many varieties of edges; giving to the eye the illusion of nature with actual depths and distances, although one knows all the time that it is a flat table on which one is looking. ”

“ If a person gifted with the visualizing power in perfection should pose his eye in the place of the object-glass of the camera, would the generic image in his brain be identical with the photographic composite? (I am assuming, for argument's sake, that the photograph gives a true rendering of any optical image, which, in strictness, it does not.) ”

“ On our minds, too, we have, or should have, a vivid impression of the picture translated into black and white; we remember what we wish to emphasize, and what to subdue, so that the resulting picture shall be true in tone and impression. We proceed then to mix our developer accordingly, remembering first that the temperature of the developing-room makes a difference, and remembering that the photographic image exists on the film to a degree proportionate to the actinic value of the light which fell upon it. ”

“ The more one knows about what may be called the anatomy of picture-making—how certain forms produce certain 260effects, certain colours or arrangements other effects, &c.—the easier will it be for him to carry away a visual memory of his subject that will stand by him during the long hours of his labours at the picture. ”

“ The eye represents the lenses of the photographer's camera; but the brain corresponds to the sensitive plate which receives the image, and on which all subsequent alterations of the image are effected. ”

“ When the eyes are caught by something in a picture, they do not at first rest there, but proceed, as we have said, on a tour of inspection of the whole area within the frame of that picture, after which they return again to the first visual interest. In making this tour the eyes seek, or at least, follow a pattern. ”

“ But even from the point of view of the true visual perception (if there is such a thing) that modern art has heard so much talk of, the copying of the retina picture is not so great a success. The impression carried away from a scene that has moved us is not its complete visual aspect. Only those things that are significant to the felt impression have been retained by the mind; and if the picture is to be a true representation of this, the significant facts must be sorted out from the mass of irrelevant matter and presented in a lively manner. ”

“ Work built up on outline drawing to which has been added light and shade, colour, aerial perspective, &c., may eventually approximate to the perfect visual appearance. And inversely, representations approached from the point of view of pure vision, the mosaic of colour on the retina, if pushed far enough, may satisfy the mental perception of form with its touch associations. And of course the two points of view are intimately connected. You cannot put an accurate outline round an object without observing the shape it occupies in the field of vision. ”

“ The great sweep of vision, a sweep covering a hundred subjects perhaps, is obtained by turning the eyes up or down or sideways. But to be true—that is, to see one picture at a time—the eye should be fixed like the lens of a camera, the limit of the picture being the range of the eye and no more. A departure from this rule not only confuses your perspective but crowds a number of points of interest into the square of your canvas, when there is really only one centre point before you in nature ”

“ Here, in this book, for example, are one hundred photographs of one hundred of the most famous sights, scenes and monuments in the whole world. To see these sights, these scenes, these monuments, is to attain a liberal education. Now what is seeing? Seeing, the philosopher will tell you, is to have certain waves of light strike your eye and create an impression on your retina of the objects that are in front of you. The retina, in other words, is nothing but a natural camera obscura. And what is a photograph? ”

“ The character, direction and curve of all lines in a canvas change with every shifting of the point of visual contact. Since the unity of a picture is different from every focus, all the lines consequently assume a slightly different direction every time our eye shifts from one spot to another. ”

“ To a large extent we are misled by the impressive prominence of the visual data. In vision we are presented with a system of inter-related and simultaneously occurring sensations which we find by experience to be the sure and certain indicators of the potent obstructions which our activity encounters. For this reason we habitually make use of the visual sign as the guide and instrument of our exertional activity, and this habitual use leads us to regard the visual presentation as the essential form of Reality. ”

“ What brings the person's image upon the ground glass of the camera? What have we that is like the camera? Which part of the eye is like the ground glass of the camera? Why can we not see in the dark? Could God use the rays of light instead of the pages of a book? Is the image of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden still existing? ”

“ If we take a photograph of a statue, it will, when viewed by one or the other eye, present the difference of the retinal images which is due to a flat surface; the parts of the photographic image will be of slightly different proportions as seen by each eye. ”

“ It is not a shadow, for it is real,—which latter fact is proved daily by those who first coax this image to enter a camera, and no sooner does it get fairly in than the clever artist impales it against a tablet of glass, or ivory, and lo! everybody carries the chained image to his home for everybody else to look at, who chooses so to do. ”

“ With this "screen" placed nearly in contact with an ordinary photographic plate, film to film, we proceed to make a copy negative, in the camera, of the original picture. This, when developed, will give the picture and an image of the screen, which has been interposed, together on one plate. ”

“ When the photographer wishes to develop the picture that is hidden in the film of the sensitive plate he carries it to a darkened room, and bathed in the developing solution the latent image gradually appears, even to the minutest details. ”

“ You can turn, if you choose, your camera skyward and focus the top of a steeple and only that. It is true, but it is uninteresting, or rather unintelligible, until you focus also the church door, and the gathering groups, and the overgrown pathway that winds through the quiet graveyard. So a picture can be true and yet very much like a slip cut from a newspaper. For some men cut thus into nature, haphazard, without care or thought, and produce perhaps a square containing an advertisement of a patent churn, a railroad timetable, and a fragment of an essay on art. ”

“ So every object about us is photographed on the rays of light and the picture becomes visible when we turn our eye, which is a small but perfect camera, so that the rays of light can go straight into our eye and the picture fall upon the back of the eye, which is called the retina, and with which this glass in the camera corresponds. ”

“ Let us suppose that a man blindfolded, and this artificial eye, a photographic camera, are set down in the open air in the bright sunshine before the scene of some great ceremony—a procession of a thousand persons, the moving panorama of a city street, or a wide extent of landscape. ”

“ If we look into another person's eye we may see there a picture of the whole field of his vision reflected from his lens. It is true that what we see is not what he sees, for that is on his retina, but the analogy of this with a photographic camera, where we see the picture on the ground glass, seems obvious and natural; and so we think of knowledge, so far as it depends on the sense of vision, as consisting in more or less vivid, more or less faded, copies of real things stored up by the memory. ”

“ In that case the image of the object is thrown upon what is called a photographic plate. Our own eyes act as lenses, and throw an image of whatever we look at, not upon a photographic plate, but upon a sensitive surface called the retina. ”

“ Accommodation.—The focussing or sharpening of the image is performed by a special apparatus. In every camera, the farther the object is from the eye the farther forward, and the nearer the object is to the eye the farther backward, is its image thrown. In photographers' cameras the back is made to slide, and can be drawn away from the lens when the object that casts the picture is near, and pushed forward when it is far. ”

“ In a camera obscura the butcher's cart and the figure of one of our own family amuse us. So a portrait of a well-known face gratifies us. Turn the eyes upside down, by looking at the landscape through your legs, and how agreeable is the picture, though you have seen it any time these twenty years! ”

“ As an object becomes perceptible to us, by means of the image thereof which is formed on the retina, it will, therefore, be seen in that direction, in which the rays enter the eye to form the image, and will always be found in the line, in which the axis of a pencil of rays flowing from it enters the eye. ”

“ To be effective in a frame, balance and unity are just as necessary. The eye finds repose and delight in the perfect equipoise of elements, brought into combination and bound together by the girdle of the frame.
A picture should be able to hang from its exact centre. Imperfect composition inflicts upon the beholder the duty of accommodating his head to the false angle of the picture. Pictures that stand the test of time do not demand astigmatic glasses. We view them balanced, and they repeat the countersign—“balanced.” ”

“ Now, while your photograph is being taken from the few rays of light which pass into a camera, you see that we might place hundreds of cameras one above another, and if they were all pointed at you they might each take a photograph of you at the same instant—the same as one thousand different persons in an audience with their two thousand eyes all look toward the speaker and see him at one and the same instant. ”

“ Light to be manipulated at will, lenses to grasp objects in and out of the present focus with equal intensity and proportion: as a painter places objects upon his canvas at what distance and under what shadow he pleases, so I think the photographer will yet do, and that before long, as he will, I am sure, yet be able to reproduce by the camera and his chemicals all the colours in the object set up before him, as he sees it reflected upon his ground-glass focussing plate. ”

“ But when we are shown a motion picture which has been made with the camera pointing downward, so that a level thing, like a plain or the surface of the sea, appears standing on end, then we like to see the points of interest so distributed that the various parts of the screen seem to be proportionally filled. ”

“ The Stereoscope achieves its effect by blending into one image pictures or drawings of an object taken from slightly different points of view so that the impression of relief is obtained in our sense of vision. ”

“ When the pictures are truthful photographs, in which the variations of light and shade are perfectly represented, a very considerable degree of relief and solidity is thus obtained; and when we have practised for a while this species of monocular vision, the drawing, whether it be of a statue, a living figure, or a building, will appear to rise in its different parts from the canvas, though only to a limited extent. ”

“ As a general rule, visual imagery tends to become more active the longer the interval preceding reproduction, and, at least in the case of stories containing the report of a number of incidents, increased visualisation provides conditions which favour transformation. ”

“ This little exercise shows that the eyes, unlike the lens of a camera, cannot see every part of a picture at once, but must range over it from point to point, repeating the tour again and again as long as the picture is in view. But, if we cannot see head, hand, and foot at once, it is evident that we must remember the head while we are observing the hand, that we must remember both the head and the hand while we are observing the foot, etc., else the whole picture could never be built up in our minds. ”