Visual Patterns
I came across a new idea the other day, one that might be a game changing idea for me. It is definitely not an original thought. It comes from Pat Kay, an Australian photographer who hosts a uTube channel on photography. The idea is that photographers have a visual language. The words of the visual language are visual patterns.
Gestalt Law of Common Fate - Objects moving in the same direction appear to belong together.
I found Pat’s uTube videos in kind of a curious way. In my research on the Dunning-Kruger Effect his video, “Get Good at Photography Fast,” popped up. It seemed like a Dunning-Kruger trap for photographers, if there ever was one. To my delight, it was actually 20 essential tips that could move any photographer with moderate knowledge forward on the continuum scale pretty fast. One of the tips was to learn to use visual patterns. Now this, in and of itself, is hardly a new topic on my blog. A human’s inclination to recognize patterns is foundational to the Gestalt Principles describing human perception, which I come back to over and over.
Putting your subject on the thirds line makes the image more dynamic.
We are all probably in agreement that having patterns like lines, geometric shapes, forms and color are elements that boost our compositions. What makes Pat’s ideas of visual patterns a notable new idea for me is the way he expands the definition of what a visual pattern is.
Pat views all of the rules of composition as patterns. He argues that the rule of thirds, for example is a pattern that humans recognize, perhaps subconsciously. Using that pattern brings meaning to a photograph. If you choose to disregard that pattern in the manner we sometimes celebrate, “rules are made to be broken,” then you need to understand how you have just changed the conversation with your viewer.
Viewers use patterns to help simplify a picture.
When Pat reframes the idea of rules of composition to types of visual patterns, he is “speaking to the choir” with me. I have always known that I am in a little different place than the traditional street photography community because I do not absolutely have to have a “story” to think a street photo is worthy. What does have to be present for me, in almost all cases, is good composition. The possibility that I am tethered to the rules of composition has historically made me feel a little ashamed. Well, that is over.
A frame helps your viewer find the subject.
Finally, while the idea of expanding what it means to be a visual pattern is interesting to me, the idea that these patterns can form a visual language is truly compelling. Perhaps I have more control in creating a story with my street photos than I thought was possible. Future blogs will explore this concept, starting with perhaps a new way of thinking about the good old rule of thirds next week.
Universal expressions or gestures add meaning to a photo.
Now for a little color theory.
RGB
CMYK is the subtractive color space. You start with a white paper that reflects all of the visible spectrum of light. As you add color to the white paper, the color subtracts out (absorbs) some of the wave lengths of light reflected back to your eye. As an example, the color Magenta, which is a mix of red and blue, absorbs the medium-wave lengths of light that our brains process as the color green and reflects back only red and blue.
RGB is the additive color space. You start with a black screen, like a monitor or a tv screen. The screen is filled with pixels. Each pixel contains three small dots of compounds called phosphors encased by a black mask. These phosphors emit either red, green or blue light when struck by the electron beams that are produced by electron guns located in the back of the tube. The different combinations and intensities of these three lights that are emitted from a pixel enters our eye and is absorbed by our red, green and blue sensing cones. Essentially, a three-digit code is passed by each pixel to cones. The code is then passed to our brain which will process it as a color. If all three lights are passed in full intensity, you see white.
It is fairly easy for me to understand how different colors are created in CMYK. If I can figure out how to get to the primary colors that we are taught as children, then I am satisfied that anything is possible. In the case of CMYK, for example, I want to know how to produce blue.
Blue = Magenta + Cyan. Magenta is red + blue - green. Cyan is blue + green - red. Put them together and you get red + blue + blue + green - green - red = blue. That is very straightforward and mathematically elegant to me.
In CMYK, how red is produced is not as straight forward as how blue is produced, but it is a whole lot more intuitive than how yellow is produced in the RGB model. In RGB if you add red light and green light, but not blue light, you get yellow light. If yellow light is shined into our eyes, it might get coded by our cones as (r=100,g=100,b=0) and interpreted by our brains as yellow. If your tv screen displays a banana, the color yellow is produced through pixels that transmit the red and green phosphors, but not the blue phosphors in a code like (100,100,0).