Young Lady Meditating

[Jim A]

Although this young lady looks Chinese (Falun Dafa?), I captured her just before going into Divali, in Auckland - the Indian Festival of Light. I was struck by her attire and composure. Also, the colour of her jacket held my attention.

[mugge]

I like it. Maybe 50mm off the top and a bit more light on her face.
Cheers Ole

[Jim A]

Thanks Ole, but a square crop had been suggested to me and it seems to work, unless I include more of the steps, which I am loathe to do. However, I am keen to hear what others think?

One thing I meant to do (as you also suggest) was to lighten her face, but then forgot. The challenge of course is not to go overboard, because she is wearing a wide-brimmed hat and would be shaded. I have used a Curves Adjustment to do it. Does it look okay?

[Jim A]

I have tended to be a bit nervous about not having enough space in the area into which the subject is looking. However, in this instance, she is no-doubt looking “inside”, which compounds things. Nevertheless, you bring up a valuable point. A (local) friend of mine mentioned the use of the Golden Spiral, so I thought of moving the shoes and using the Spiral. Here is the result, what do you think? It’s slightly rough at the moment.

[Shadowman]

The crop, space around the subject also depends on what you want to include in the composition, for instance the sneakers don't really add to the image yet you probably wanted as much of the mat as you include in the final image, cropping out the sneakers lead to either artistic/aesthetic debates (personally or from peers) and you definitely could not ask the woman to move her shoes; nor could you do it for her.

[Round Tuit]

Jim, I think that the strength of your original composition is that the woman is facing outside the frame. That emphasizes her being in her inner world and oblivious of her surronding. Moving her to the left still results in a "nice" composition but I believe that it looses much of its impact.

[Manfred M]

Your second image is definitely the strongest of the two, but the use of the Golden Spiral seems to weaken the image. It drives the placement of the elements without looking at the overall balance of the shot.

[Chataignier]

Jim, I think that the strength of your original composition is that the woman is facing outside the frame. That emphasizes her being in her inner world and oblivious of her surronding. Moving her to the left still results in a "nice" composition but I believe that it looses much of its impact.

I agree

[Round Tuit]

Your second image is definitely the strongest of the two, but the use of the Golden Spiral seems to weaken the image. It drives the placement of the elements without looking at the overall balance of the shot.

Manfred, What in the second version makes you think that it is the stronger of the two?

[Manfred M]

Manfred, What in the second version makes you think that it is the stronger of the two?

Flow and balance.

In Western countries we tend to scan images and text from left to right, so often, having the most important element in the image on the left and the visual flow going left to right seems strongest. In the first image, the shoes disrupt rather than contribute to the natural visual flow.

The other aspect is the balance of the image; the wall and the step create visual lines that draw the viewer's eyes out of the frame on the right hand side to where they seem to want to meet. The wider to narrower pattern follows in the second image, but not in the first. When something disrupts the visual flow, that tends to reduce the effectiveness of the image.

[mugge]

I think the amended first image is the best. Moving the girl to the left has cramped her view of the world.
Cheers Ole

[Round Tuit]

Flow and balance.

In Western countries we tend to scan images and text from left to right, so often, having the most important element in the image on the left and the visual flow going left to right seems strongest. In the first image, the shoes disrupt rather than contribute to the natural visual flow.

The other aspect is the balance of the image; the wall and the step create visual lines that draw the viewer's eyes out of the frame on the right hand side to where they seem to want to meet. The wider to narrower pattern follows in the second image, but not in the first. When something disrupts the visual flow, that tends to reduce the effectiveness of the image.

Thank you Manfred.
It seems to me that the way we scan a photo depends more on what is in the photo and the shape of the frame than on our cultural biases. In this case, my eyes scan from the young lady's face to her bright yellow jacket, down to her legs, left to her shoes, give a quick glance at the non descript bacground and back to the face. In this sequence, the shoes do not create a distraction as they quickly relate to her already discovered bare feet. They also provide a balancing element on the left of the frame without which the large negative space behind the woman would need to be cropped and that would lessen the feeling of her being isolated in her inner world.
I don't think that the second version can have the same impact although, with a few tweaks, it could be a pleasant photo.

[Manfred M]

Thank you Manfred.
It seems to me that the way we scan a photo depends more on what is in the photo and the shape of the frame than on our cultural biases. In this case, my eyes scan from the young lady's face to her bright yellow jacket, down to her legs, left to her shoes, give a quick glance at the non descript bacground and back to the face. In this sequence, the shoes do not create a distraction as they quickly relate to her already discovered bare feet. They also provide a balancing element on the left of the frame without which the large negative space behind the woman would need to be cropped and that would lessen the feeling of her being isolated in her inner world.
I don't think that the second version can have the same impact although, with a few tweaks, it could be a pleasant photo.

The viewing / scanning direction is something that is mentioned in photographic composition courses and so far as I understand it, there have been some studies done that confirm this, although I do not have any references to them. I was involved in a study using high speed video work and for the task we were investigating, this visual scanning direction was confirmed to be at work.

The reason this can be important from a visual standpoint is that if the flow to the subject (the meditating woman) is interrupted by the high contrast element (shoes), the overall visual flow gets disrupted.

Take a look in how the visual flow of the image changes if we just take out the shoes and don't change anything else in the image.



I'm not suggesting this makes the image stronger (or weaker) but it does change the impact on the viewer.

[Antonio Correia]

I think the sneakers are a part of the image as they underline the action.
While meditating she removed the shoes - versus - Is she meditating with shoes on ?

[Manfred M]

I think the sneakers are a part of the image as they underline the action.
While meditating she removed the shoes - versus - Is she meditating with shoes on ?

Antonio - the image in #13 is nothing more than an attempt to demonstrate how the sneakers impact the way we see the main subject. I agree, they are an important element in the composition.

[Round Tuit]

The viewing / scanning direction is something that is mentioned in photographic composition courses and so far as I understand it, there have been some studies done that confirm this, although I do not have any references to them. I was involved in a study using high speed video work and for the task we were investigating, this visual scanning direction was confirmed to be at work.

The reason this can be important from a visual standpoint is that if the flow to the subject (the meditating woman) is interrupted by the high contrast element (shoes), the overall visual flow gets disrupted.

Take a look in how the visual flow of the image changes if we just take out the shoes and don't change anything else in the image.



I'm not suggesting this makes the image stronger (or weaker) but it does change the impact on the viewer.

I think that we both agree that removing a visual element from the picture clearly changes how we look at it. I would also think that there is no "right" answer as to whether the shoes should be on the right or the left of the young woman. It is ultimately a matter of personal taste.
What I was questionning is your assetion that we normally scan a picture from left to right and therefore we should arrange the elements in our photos to minimize visual disruptions along that direction. All the books that I have read on composition, and frequent comments on this site, seem to indicate that the eye is "attracted" prerefentially to certain elements over others: sharp focus over soft, high contrast over low contrast, bright colours over pastels, faces over almost anything else, etc. All this seems to indicate that we do not go smoothly from left to right but rather jump erratically from element to element.
If you are interested, you can google a well respected eyeball tracking experiment by a russian scientist named Yarbus. It shows that the jumping pattern is highly variable not only between individual but also varies over time for one individual.

[Manfred M]

Andre - I would love to see a link to the paper by Yarbus to read it. When I was involved in this type of work about 10 years ago, there was a real lack of academic work in the field. We suspected that there had to be some; military and transportation industries came to mind, but those types of studies were proprietary and not published.

The study that I sponsored is not directly applicable to photography, but was related to an industrial need dealing with reducing errors in the process and we had an outside team that had ergonomists do the work, which was reviewed by our internal ergonomics team. The study was very small; around 6 test subjects with a 50% mix of males and females, some subjects did the work, others had not and we also had a good age mix. The study was used internally only. We found the following:

1. There was a pre-targeting phase where the bottom to top, left to right eye movement was consistent across all test subjects. Really a diagonal scan. This is very much in line with what I was taught about how people scan images in photographic composition classes.

2. Targeting - once the eyes got to the target material, the eyes stopped the initial search movement and went to a slightly different pattern, straight across in a horizontal straight line. As the test subjects were reading the material and they hit the line with the information required to make the decision, this made sense.

3. Data acquisition and processing - the scan continued until a point where the test subject felt they had enough information to make a decision, the scan would stop and the mental / physical process of what to do with the data began. We found that this step is where the errors occurred as data uptake stopped, even though all of the data that was actually required to make the decision had not been scanned.


In a photo, it is likely that we have a similar process. The eyes moving to the subject are likely to follow step 1, as listed and once they hit the target (i.e. area of interest), the scan changes. The problem we were never able to reconcile was that eye movement and how the visual / decision making aspects were connected. Random eye movements occurred, but how this impacted how the data was interpreted was not an area that we looked at.

I do know that the Photographic Society of America (PSA), in their evaluation course, suggests that eye movement is random, but they never linked that to how the viewer looks at the image. Painters (and photographers) are taught that certain visual tools (leading lines, contrast, repeating patterns, use of space), i.e. the "tools of composition" are how a pleasing image is created, but I believe this is all based on anecdotal evidence and the mix of different tools is what works and does not work.

Tastes do vary and that is very personal and "expertise" is often little more than opinion...

[Round Tuit]

Andre - I would love to see a link to the paper by Yarbus to read it. When I was involved in this type of work about 10 years ago, there was a real lack of academic work in the field. We suspected that there had to be some; military and transportation industries came to mind, but those types of studies were proprietary and not published.

The study that I sponsored is not directly applicable to photography, but was related to an industrial need dealing with reducing errors in the process and we had an outside team that had ergonomists do the work, which was reviewed by our internal ergonomics team. The study was very small; around 6 test subjects with a 50% mix of males and females, some subjects did the work, others had not and we also had a good age mix. The study was used internally only. We found the following:

1. There was a pre-targeting phase where the bottom to top, left to right eye movement was consistent across all test subjects. Really a diagonal scan. This is very much in line with what I was taught about how people scan images in photographic composition classes.

2. Targeting - once the eyes got to the target material, the eyes stopped the initial search movement and went to a slightly different pattern, straight across in a horizontal straight line. As the test subjects were reading the material and they hit the line with the information required to make the decision, this made sense.

3. Data acquisition and processing - the scan continued until a point where the test subject felt they had enough information to make a decision, the scan would stop and the mental / physical process of what to do with the data began. We found that this step is where the errors occurred as data uptake stopped, even though all of the data that was actually required to make the decision had not been scanned.


In a photo, it is likely that we have a similar process. The eyes moving to the subject are likely to follow step 1, as listed and once they hit the target (i.e. area of interest), the scan changes. The problem we were never able to reconcile was that eye movement and how the visual / decision making aspects were connected. Random eye movements occurred, but how this impacted how the data was interpreted was not an area that we looked at.

I do know that the Photographic Society of America (PSA), in their evaluation course, suggests that eye movement is random, but they never linked that to how the viewer looks at the image. Painters (and photographers) are taught that certain visual tools (leading lines, contrast, repeating patterns, use of space), i.e. the "tools of composition" are how a pleasing image is created, but I believe this is all based on anecdotal evidence and the mix of different tools is what works and does not work.

Tastes do vary and that is very personal and "expertise" is often little more than opinion...

Yarbus published his book "Eye Movement and Vision" in 1967. This link will take you to a paper published in the journal Iperception in 2010. It provides historical information on Yarbus, describes his experiments in detail as well as work by the authors that supports Yarbus' results.
Author Michael Freeman in chapter 2 of his book "The Photographer's Eye" also give a one page summary of the work which is easier to read.

[Manfred M]

Thanks André. I vaguely remember some discussion of Yarbus's work during the study that I was responsible for and I suspect it was discounted because it did not deal with reading.

There is an interesting article I found and read here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...MC3563050/#R12