Exploring aesthetic principles of spatial composition through stock photography

Gardner, Jonathan S.; Fowlkes, Charless C.; Nothelfer, Christine; Palmer, Stephen

doi:10.1167/8.6.337

Cited by 11 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…We discovered these compositional biases by studying images of meaningful objects that we created for this purpose, but evidence for the horizontal biases are evident in suitably chosen corpora of paintings, drawings, or photographic images. Gardner et al (2008) found evidence of the horizontal inward bias for single-object images in stock photography databases, and Bertamini et al (2011) did so in paintings and drawings of animals in medieval bestiaries. We expect that similar corroboration of the present vertical compositional effects could be found in appropriate samples of photographs, paintings, and/or drawings, and we plan to do so in the future.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Aesthetic issues in spatial composition: Effects of vertical position and perspective on framing single objects.

Sammartino¹,

Palmer²

2012

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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Aesthetic preference for the vertical composition of single-object pictures was studied through a series of two-alternative forced-choice experiments. The results reveal the influence of several factors, including spatial asymmetries in the functional properties of the object and the typical position of the object relative to the observer. With asymmetric side views of objects, people generally prefer objects typically located below the observer's viewpoint (e.g., a bowl or swimming stingray) to be below the center of the frame and objects typically located above the observer's viewpoint (e.g., a light fixture or flying eagle) to be above the center of the frame. In addition, people generally prefer symmetric views of those same objects from directly above or directly below to be closer to the center of the frame. We suggest that these results can be unified by the hypothesis that people prefer the object's "affordance space" to be centered within the frame.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Aesthetic issues in spatial composition: Effects of vertical position and perspective on framing single objects.

Sammartino¹,

Palmer²

2012

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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“…In terms of the factors mentioned above, the "best" picture of a given object should be a high-contrast image of the object at (or near) the center of the frame portrayed in its most canonical perspective and at its canonical size. Such a picture might indeed be the best image if the intent of the photographer was simply to portray that object most clearly, as is often the goal in stock photography [see Gardner et al (2008) and databases of stock photography, such as http://www.corbis.com or http://www.gettyimages.com], and in naturalists' drawings of plants and animals [eg Audubon's images: see Bertamini et al (2011)]. In such cases there should indeed be consistency between aesthetic judgments and recognition performance, as fluency theory predicts.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aesthetic Issues in Spatial Composition: Representational Fit and the Role of Semantic Context

Sammartino

Palmer

2012

Perception

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Previous research on aesthetic preference for spatial compositions has shown robust, systematic preferences for object locations within frames and for object perspectives. In the present experiment, we show that these preferences can be dramatically altered by changing the contextual meaning of an image through pairing it with different titles, as predicted by a theoretical account in terms of "representational fit". People prefer standard (default) compositions with a neutral title that merely describes the content of the picture (eg side-view of a plane with the title "Flying") but nonstandard compositions when they "fit" a title with compatible spatial implications (eg rear-view of a plane with the title "Departing"). The results are discussed in terms of their implications for theories based on representational fit versus perceptual and conceptual fluency and with their implications for classic aesthetic accounts in terms of preference for novelty through violating expectations.

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“…Despite the high prevalence of photography in the everyday world, empirical studies of the psychological basis of photography are, like philosophical analyses of photography (Dobel et al 2007;Maynard 2001), quite rare. Important exceptions are the study of Axelsson (2007), who contrasted the responses of professional photographers and non-expert photographers to photographic images; that of Palmer et al (2008), who asked participants to take digital photographs of single objects within a constrained environment; and the study of Gardner et al (2008), which looked at tendencies of focal objects in stock photographs to be near the centre or oriented toward the centre. As an experimental technique for manipulating images, cropping has been included in the taxonomy of Tinio and Leder (2009) as a`composition-level manipulation', between global or`surface-level manipulations' (eg contrast, focus), and local or`semantic-level manipulations' (eg altering image content by rearranging elements within an image), cropping altering both local and global aspects of an image so that it alters``complexity, symmetry and balance'' (page 55).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Psychometrics of Photographic Cropping: The Influence of Colour, Meaning, and Expertise

et al. 2011

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Cropping is the central act of photography, the viewfinder of a camera being used to crop a portion of the visual world which is then surrounded with a frame. Six studies are described which show that the act of cropping is carried out reliably and confidently by both expert and non-expert participants. Two studies confirm that some croppers are better croppers than others, their cropped images being preferred aesthetically over the croppings of less-good croppers. Colour had little impact on cropping decisions, whereas thresholded monochrome images ('Mooney images') dramatically altered crop positions. That suggests that cropping can be driven top-down, by the meaning of objects in photographs, but the fact that the Mooneyised images are still cropped consistently, suggests that image structure, perhaps in the form of low-level image properties, may still be important. Experts crop pictures differently from non-experts, and they take longer, viewing a wider range of possible crops, pausing longer to assess crops, and using more formal terminology when reflecting on their cropping decisions. Experts' crops are not, however, preferred more, either by non-expert viewers or by expert viewers. Cropping, it is suggested, is an ideal paradigm for experimental aesthetics, allowing precise experimental control with Fechner's Method of Production, a technique which normally is not easy to use.

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Exploring aesthetic principles of spatial composition through stock photography

Cited by 11 publications

References 0 publications

Aesthetic issues in spatial composition: Effects of vertical position and perspective on framing single objects.

Aesthetic issues in spatial composition: Effects of vertical position and perspective on framing single objects.

Aesthetic Issues in Spatial Composition: Representational Fit and the Role of Semantic Context

The Psychometrics of Photographic Cropping: The Influence of Colour, Meaning, and Expertise

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