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Perception and Imaging: Photography--A Way of Seeing
How do you experience a photograph? What do you want a viewer to feel when they look at your image?
Perception and Imaging explains how we see and what we don't see. Relevant psychological principles will help you predict your viewer's emotional reaction to your photographic images, giving you more power, control, and tools for communicating your desired message. Knowing how our minds work helps photographers, graphic designers, videographers, animators, and visual communicators both create and critique sophisticated works of visual art. Benefit from this insight in your work.
Topics covered in this book: gestalt grouping, memory and association, space, time, color, contours, illusion and ambiguity, morphics, personality, subliminals, critiquing photographs, and rhetoric.
Perception and Imaging explains how we see and what we don't see. Relevant psychological principles will help you predict your viewer's emotional reaction to your photographic images, giving you more power, control, and tools for communicating your desired message. Knowing how our minds work helps photographers, graphic designers, videographers, animators, and visual communicators both create and critique sophisticated works of visual art. Benefit from this insight in your work.
Topics covered in this book: gestalt grouping, memory and association, space, time, color, contours, illusion and ambiguity, morphics, personality, subliminals, critiquing photographs, and rhetoric.
432 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 5, 2025
I have re-read this book several times. This may be my fourth time but I find the overview of concepts on perception and photography useful tools and reminders on the way we see the world as helpful to my art practice. My edition is an older one so the last chapter on social media is a bit outdated. Some great quotes in here as well.
August 22, 2022
Nice comprehensive book about theories in art. However, the author tried too hard to increase its depth by including some seemingly related stuffs from some other fields that he probably doesn’t understand, which only makes the book more unorganized.
January 18, 2024
Amazing book covering a gamut of big concepts. Significantly deepened my appreciation, understanding, and creation of graphics and photographic images.
April 16, 2018
John Suler’s new edition of Perception and Imaging took me much longer to read than I expected, for all the right reasons. The book served two very different purposes for me, both resource and inspiration: it thoroughly covers lots of essential factual ground, like visual illusions and color spaces, but it also wanders across psychological and cultural dimensions of imagery, like semiotics, rhetoric, and personality. For each topic, it offers multiple perspectives for different kinds of learners and artists, without worshiping any single approach.
The chapter on color is a good example. It starts with definitions of color, how color spaces are defined, and how color is produced on screen and in print; proceeds to how colors are named and described; then moves on to discussions of synaesthesia, the cultural connotations of color, and the history and psychology of black and white photography. Sometimes the book feels direct and structured, while at other times it seems to wander pleasingly across a landscape of relevant ideas – and I kept stopping to enjoy the view, as many of the topics made me contemplate my own photography, or gave me ideas for new experiments.
Written, I presume, as a comprehensive textbook, there are still plenty of things it doesn’t attempt. This is not a book about technical photography; it is about the relationship between human and image, which remains relatively stable however images are created. You’ll bring your own knowledge of storytelling, light, composition, your use of your camera...to be enriched at all levels from foundations to flourishes. It is not a book about the biology or neuroscience of vision; although it touches briefly on the anatomy of the eye, it doesn’t really dig into the brain and its processing of visual input. And it is not a prescriptive “how to,” but much more an acknowledgement of the richness and complexity of communicating with other human beings through visual media.
As a photographer, I can already say that I’ve created new images, and influenced others to create images, based on ideas I discovered in the book, and have many more ideas waiting to find their outlet. I’ll definitely be returning and rereading on an ongoing basis.
The chapter on color is a good example. It starts with definitions of color, how color spaces are defined, and how color is produced on screen and in print; proceeds to how colors are named and described; then moves on to discussions of synaesthesia, the cultural connotations of color, and the history and psychology of black and white photography. Sometimes the book feels direct and structured, while at other times it seems to wander pleasingly across a landscape of relevant ideas – and I kept stopping to enjoy the view, as many of the topics made me contemplate my own photography, or gave me ideas for new experiments.
Written, I presume, as a comprehensive textbook, there are still plenty of things it doesn’t attempt. This is not a book about technical photography; it is about the relationship between human and image, which remains relatively stable however images are created. You’ll bring your own knowledge of storytelling, light, composition, your use of your camera...to be enriched at all levels from foundations to flourishes. It is not a book about the biology or neuroscience of vision; although it touches briefly on the anatomy of the eye, it doesn’t really dig into the brain and its processing of visual input. And it is not a prescriptive “how to,” but much more an acknowledgement of the richness and complexity of communicating with other human beings through visual media.
As a photographer, I can already say that I’ve created new images, and influenced others to create images, based on ideas I discovered in the book, and have many more ideas waiting to find their outlet. I’ll definitely be returning and rereading on an ongoing basis.
January 2, 2008
Wow. This was an excellent, richly illustrated book on how people perceive images, and how to manipulate that through photography and art. The book is focused on photography, but the concepts apply equally well to other forms of art (including quilting!) It inspired me to get out my camera, and to look at scenes very differently, which was its stated objective.
The book tackles subjects from positive-negative space, to the effects of compressing 3D images down to 2D, to a fairly extensive review of color theory, concepts, and experiments. The book is filled with relevant quotes, puzzles, suggestions, and plenty of photos and illustrations to make the points more clearly. Each chapter has a list of exercises, but they are very film-photography-based, including variations on how to develop film. This is somewhat interesting, since these details are rarely mentioned during the chapters themselves.
I highly recommend to anyone interested in how people see the world -- I always say I don't understand art, but after reading this book, I'll have to say I understand some of it; I'm just no good at it. Perhaps another book? :)
The book tackles subjects from positive-negative space, to the effects of compressing 3D images down to 2D, to a fairly extensive review of color theory, concepts, and experiments. The book is filled with relevant quotes, puzzles, suggestions, and plenty of photos and illustrations to make the points more clearly. Each chapter has a list of exercises, but they are very film-photography-based, including variations on how to develop film. This is somewhat interesting, since these details are rarely mentioned during the chapters themselves.
I highly recommend to anyone interested in how people see the world -- I always say I don't understand art, but after reading this book, I'll have to say I understand some of it; I'm just no good at it. Perhaps another book? :)
November 19, 2018
I enjoyed what I read from the book, in a way, it was the hidden language of arts in all its fields, which, surely helped a lot to discuss and search theories of arts, especially photography. Its a way of accepting to change and acknowledging the move.
The understanding of colors, the quotes of different scientists or even philosophers, supported my introduction stage, and still providing a focused into the meaning of seeing. enabled me to critique the assignments or even the books we were reading. a flash on the semantic differential scale, a closer look into composition, evaluation, validity, the variability of reviewing other's work and many other answers keen to highlight and introduce more ways to seeing a photograph without a word. It contains the best terminology for ARTS & Photography in particular. I will reveal more, when I will read it again.
The understanding of colors, the quotes of different scientists or even philosophers, supported my introduction stage, and still providing a focused into the meaning of seeing. enabled me to critique the assignments or even the books we were reading. a flash on the semantic differential scale, a closer look into composition, evaluation, validity, the variability of reviewing other's work and many other answers keen to highlight and introduce more ways to seeing a photograph without a word. It contains the best terminology for ARTS & Photography in particular. I will reveal more, when I will read it again.
January 17, 2018
Excellent book, interesting from the first to the last page. The authors transpose and apply to photography, and visual arts in general, the principles of psychology, offering the readers, as photographers and whatever their level of skills, tools that will make it easier for them to produce quality photographs and, as viewers, understand the reasons why they find an image to be pleasing while another, even perhaps similar, is displeasing.
No subject is left out of this book, and particularly interesting is the chapter dedicated to the digital and the new world of online images, its sharing, understanding and criticism.
To read and keep close, for frequent consultation.
No subject is left out of this book, and particularly interesting is the chapter dedicated to the digital and the new world of online images, its sharing, understanding and criticism.
To read and keep close, for frequent consultation.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews