psychology – Ming Thein

Photography, philosophy and psychology

May 2, 2020 by Ming Thein

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In a sense, this entire site has revolved around these three topics*: the way we experience it and share this experience with others (psychology, and to some degree, physiology), and the way we interpret it (philosophy) – expressed by means of a static, 2D visual medium (photography). Today I’m going to attempt to tie it together in a deceptively simple way in today’s post: photography is capturing a still image. Good photography is capturing something unique or transient and sharing it; really exceptional photography says something meaningful about the subject and the interpretation – and in a way that an external audience can understand.

*Despite what others may think about my views on or approach towards hardware: that is merely a means to an end, and I think sufficiently resolved now to the point of being effectively unimportant.

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Filed Under: Articles, On Photography Tagged With: article, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, philosophy, photography, psychology, thein

Back to basics: Rules of vision – part II

August 15, 2019 by Ming Thein

Upside down, or?

Judging from the correspondence and comments flying around recently, it’s about time we did a refresher course here on the fundamentals of composition and image-making. As usual, there’s far too much obsession over hardware and not enough thought about what it’s actually being used for. This will be the first of several posts from the archives in this theme. That said, those people are unlikely to read these posts anyway…

Continued from part I – hopefully the first part has had time to settle and digest; let us press on…

We draw temporal inferences from direction of shadows
The length and direction of shadows also suggests time of day: this is one of the indelible subconscious rules dating back to the very beginning. It is a consequence of observing sunrises and sunsets and being able to judge approaching darkness accordingly, by both overall luminance of a scene and the shadows cast by the sun. Sadly, for a lot of us, this is somewhat academic as there are far too many offices with hours that extend beyond daylight and further have no natural light whatsoever…

Back to basics: Rules of vision (or, things we can’t help seeing) – part I

August 9, 2019 by Ming Thein

Did you notice the sign above the man’s head? What about the house number? Or what appears to be a Cuban flag in the doorway? Or was the moving man the first ‘anchor’?

Regular readers will know that I hate arbitrary maxims labelled as ‘photographic’ rules simply because there is no such thing as a ‘universal scene’ or universal set of parameters for every image. Every composition is different, and every creative intention is different, which means the whole premise of there being a fixed set of laws that make a ‘good’ image or ‘image that works’ can only be nonsense. However, I do think there are some fundamental principles of human vision – and consequently psychological response to elements in an image – that we cannot ignore since they directly influence the response of our audience to the ideas we are trying to present. That is what I wish to address today: what are the autonomous/ subconscious/ reflex/ automatic – pick your preferred term – visual responses that we should be aware of and seek to utilise when we compose an image? Think of this post as the predecessor to The Four Things: it’s the underlying reason why some of the Things have to be the way they are.

Rules of vision – part II

October 27, 2016 by Ming Thein

Upside down, or?

Continued from part I – hopefully the first part has had time to settle and digest; let us press on…

Rules of vision (or, things we can’t help seeing) – part I

October 25, 2016 by Ming Thein

Did you notice the sign above the man’s head? What about the house number? Or what appears to be a Cuban flag in the doorway? Or was the moving man the first ‘anchor’?

The Four Things, redux

July 28, 2016 by Ming Thein

One image that appears to break the rules, but really doesn’t: relatively flat light prevents texture from being too harsh, but it’s directional enough to create the curved shadow between the mown and unmown grass, with the line leading to the yellow flowers – that stand out from the rest of the meadow. Order in chaos, guided nature.

In the past, I’ve written about ‘The Four Things’ – what I consider to be the cornerstone elements of a good image. I’ve also written about subject isolation and finding that extra unpredictable magic element that lifts an image to the realm of the memorable. I’ve not written about ‘the idea’ yet, but that’s in the works. What I’d like to do today is revisit the core structure of an image with the benefit of hindsight and simplify those four things as much as possible, with the background context of understanding how our brains work. It might seem like photography and psychology all over again; but remember that photography is really a conversation between photographer and audience – and like all forms of communication, the rules are both cultural and somewhat more deep-seated at an anthropological level.

Creator or consumer?

May 3, 2016 by Ming Thein

Entropy is the way of all things

I have a theory: there are only two kinds of people in this world when it comes to content and creative output. Either you are primarily a consumer, or primarily a creator. We also have to take two other parameters into account: quantity and reach; total impact is determined by both – little quantity and widespread reach is probably about the same as high quantity and narrow reach, with high quantity and high reach of course having the greatest net output. A consumer is a person who has little quantity or reach; certainly less than the media they consume. A creator is a person whose output exceeds their input (reflagging and distribution doesn’t count; that’s not creating anything new). Of course, a much simpler way of looking at this is by time: do you spend more time reading and watching, or making/ shooting/ posting/ writing/ sharing?

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Filed Under: Articles, Off topic Tagged With: article, consumer, creator, essay, ming, ming thein, mingthein.com, opinion, personality type, psychology, thein

Why photography satisfies

March 9, 2016 by Ming Thein

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A photograph is like food: endless in variety, universally appealing or an extremely acquired taste; easily obtainable and available at a different level to suit every preference and budget. You can cook eat the same thing several days in a row and still enjoy it, or you can do something completely different every day. You can make it yourself or subcontract. There are no rules about what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Moreover, both photography and food are something relatively limitless for us humans: both in the creation, and the consumption. Just as we need nutrition on a daily basis, we need regular visual stimulation – and though you can manage just fine if you never cook yourself, at some point, curiosity is likely to motivate you to create. The more effort we put in, the more likely we are likely to be satisfied with the result: many techniques or dishes are deceptive in simplicity: the fewer elements present, the more perfect they have to be. I frequently think of analogs like minimalist photography being similar to sushi: there are just four ingredients (fish, rice, wasabi, soy sauce) – yet each one can affect the final outcome drastically. An uneducated diner might not be able to say why a particular piece of sushi (or photograph) works, a skilled one will be able to say why. But both will appreciate it. And just as with food, good ingredients and good equipment help, but at the end, it’s still down to the skill and imagination of the chef.

*Masterclass alumni will know I use the cooking analogy a lot: if a finished print is like a plated meal, then the planning and ingredient-gathering process and pre-prep is scouting and seeing; cooking is capture; plating is post processing.

OT guest contribution: The pathology of ‘fanboyism’ and a little advice to MT

September 6, 2015 by Ming Thein

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A representation of photographer logic; image suggested by MT.

A first for me: today’s post is an article courtesy of guest contributor, psychologist and photographer Dr. P.L., a London-based practitioner of some note who wishes to remain anonymous to avoid spam from said fanboys. I have asked him to keep the terminology as readable to the non-psychology layperson as possible.

I write this piece as a concerned reader and friend of MT: of late, I’ve started to notice a lot of hostility starting to creep into the comments, which must be addressed lest it be to the ultimate detriment of all.

Photography is a pursuit that is attractive to individuals who a) are creative, or believe they are creative; b) tend to be somewhat analytical; c) in general prefer to operate somewhat independently. As much as teamwork is required for a Crewdson-style production, ultimately there is still only one creative vision and one person aiming the camera. A) is necessary to be able to distil scenes of interest from the common. B) tends to be the case because some technical proficiency is required for the degree of control required to reliably translate vision to output. Photography is also an anthropological and psychological pursuit: we are reflecting ourselves in our observations, whether we share them with others or not. And more often than not we are observing others, too. I believe herein lies an explanation as to why photography seems to generate so many fanboys – and so much irrationality.

The format matters, but not in the way you might think

December 8, 2014 by Ming Thein

Legs.

Having shot extensively with oue 645Z over the last few months, I’ve developed a new hypothesis: the format – i.e. the physical size of the recording medium – matters to the output, but not in the way that we’d expect. Naturally, we assume that the larger the sensor or film, the higher the image quality. Since so much of that is both subjective and perceptual and thus affects the final impact of the image, perhaps it’s important to understand exactly what’s going on.