According to Hilligross and Howard’s Visual Communication, there is a lot that goes into the way we view images. That is, visual perception is an “active, thinking process of planning for, as well as interpreting, sensory data from the eyes.” Gestalt principles are constantly being utilized in our daily vision processes. Two of these principles are especially helpful when both interpreting a document as a viewer and creating documents as an author: separating figure from ground and grouping by proximity and similarity. Authors of websites and blogs need to especially keep these principles in mind when creating documents as to not overwhelm and confuse the viewer.
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| A snapshot of the homepage on Perez Hilton www.perezhilton.com |
In the above image of Perez Hilton’s blog, we can dissect the Gestalt principles being employed. First of all, we can separate the figure from the ground using figure-ground separation. For example, we can see the title “Perez Hilton” separate from the white striped background. In the right-hand column, there is a pink box grouping together clips from “Perez TV.” The pink background encompassing all of the video clips, as well as the similarity and proximity of these clips from each other allows us to group these images together.
In Visual Methodologies, Gillian Rose discusses the truthfulness of a photograph. How true is a photograph? People generally consider photographs as a means of capturing things exactly the way that they are. However, this is not always the case. For example, in older times cameras were not very light sensitive at all, meaning that in order for a clear photograph to be taken, the subjects had to remain very still for several seconds. This stillness hardly allows for any capturing of real events. However, more recently, cameras have become much more light sensitive, allowing for snapshots to be taken at any given moment with close to perfect clarity.
With advances in the technology behind cameras, however, came advances in other industries as well. David Airey discusses just this in a blog post titled “Sex, Lies and Photoshop.” Although things can now be captured instantly just the way they are, people now want to see things better than they really are! Now, when wondering about the truthfulness of a photograph, we not only need to consider the technology based on the time period, but we also need to ask ourselves what technology may have been implemented following the click of the camera.
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| This before and after Photoshopped picture of Faith Hill shows the drastic changes Photoshop can makewww.davidairey.com |
This video shows another great example of how makeup
and Photoshop can change an image or person
After reading both of these excerpts, I better understand the technicalities that go into the production of any type of website or blog. Without knowing these basic tendencies it would be nearly impossible to make a productive webpage in which readers enjoy reading.
After reading these articles, I was happy to see that your post really emphasized the same major concepts that i felt were most important for visual interpretations. Primarily with the Perez Hilton example, grouping, spacing, and separating the image from the background are all essential for navigating a blog. The examples from the Hilligoss and Howard article about evenly spaced text were really beneficial. Making a bold heading directly followed by text and then leaving a space before the next heading is a common formality for all blogs and websites. What I also found interesting in these articles was the idea that we filter out the unnecessary features by picturing an image as a whole. Looking at a website we identify that it is a website but each person will focus on the few focal points that stand out to them most. So in terms of the Perez Hilton blog, most people tend to focus on the biggest and brightest text.
ReplyDeleteFocusing on the next article, "Visual Modalities" your example was definitely something original. I never would have thought about photo shop and all the other technical alterations people will do to an image in order to sell a product. It is crazy how many things are not what they seem. I actually have a story to follow up with your example. An older friend of mine works in a photography store and after taking yearbook pictures several senior girls asked her if she could remove a pimple and a few freckles. Within literally five seconds she erased all the "problems" in the picture and the girl's face was extremely clear without a single blotch. How crazy? Technology really does affect the an audience's view of an image.
Taylor,
ReplyDeleteI would like to start off by saying I couldn't agree more with what you have posted here. Just like Hilligross and Howard said, visual perception requires the viewer to actively understand what they are seeing. That being said I love the examples you picked. First off, a website like Perez Hilton is a great example because it has so many different things going on at once. I actually have the page open at the moment and there are three different ads, a glamourous word art of Perez Hilton, and then the blog itself. In addition your example of the Faith Hill portrait perfectly describes visual perception. The image is bland and boring, until graphics and other things are added, making a simple picture much harder to visually determine.
Taylor,
ReplyDeleteMy reaction to these articles was the same as yours. I actually had learned about these gestalt principles in AP psychology last year, but had never applied it to the internet, or to the blogosphere for that matter. I think that the example of Perez Hilton is a great choice because it is a very famous, and frequently visited blog. So, he must be doing something right! I think that it is pleasing to the eyes and easy to distinguish background from foreground really helps.
Also, I like your before and after shot of Faith Hill. It is very clear what technology can do these days, and it shows that photography doesn't always capture reality. In fact, I visited vogue last year and actually got to see one of the people changing the picture around to see what would be most pleasing to the eye. She was trying to make the cover look as good as possible without letting it look fake, because don't you think when things are "too" fake, there is un-appeal to the photo? Anyway, the editors at vogue do so they were trying to avoid that. I guess as technology becomes more and more advanced, as you said, people don't want things as they are anymore, they want them even better. But how much better is too much better?