Ian Furniss Photography » Blog Archive

Visualisation

One of the most fascinating days i’ve spent in Belgrade was a few years ago when my dearest friend took me on a visit to the Nikola Tesla museum. I knew very little about Tesla at the time, other than he was responsible for some very crazy ideas to do with death rays and science fiction. It was a pretty negative view created largely by my own ignorance of course, but also a negative media image surrounding his many ideas and achievements. The reality, as is often the case, is completely the opposite and the man was an absolute genius. ‘Inspiring’ just doesn’t cover it. Much of his work remains unknown or hidden in some way, either by being attributed to others or deliberately ignored because of the implications to business (free energy) etc, but, the reason I mention him is because he had an incredible way of working. You see Tesla, literally did everything in his head.

I’m not talking here about someone saying “Hey guys, i’ve got an idea for a shoebox … it’s kind of rectangular with a bit on top that makes a lid”. This was a guy who would create complex machinery in his head, complete with measurements, give it a test-run in his mind, correct anything he needed to, and only then would he go out and build the thing! Mind-blowing! Literally!! Of course there was, and there only ever will be one Nikola Tesla, but creating and using mental pictures is something everyone can do to some degree at least. One thing my old aikido sensei used to suggest to me was to close my eyes and picture my surrounding by the things I could hear or smell. If that’s a bit too ‘tree-hugging hippy’ then other things such as remembering pictures is another way to train the mind i:e instead of trying to remember a phone number, write it down and remember the number as an image rather than a series of numbers. One memory rather than seven.

In relation to photography, visualising an end image can be a very useful technique. Most people I imagine will have seen artists holding a paintbrush in the direction of their subject to gain a better perspective of the relationship between different objects or components of an image. Photographers will sometimes shape their hands in a kind of rough 4:3 ratio rectangle in an attempt to visualise the resulting photo. Each of these things can help to create a better mental picture of a photo but they can be taken further as well. There are techniques to increase the 3-dimensional feel of an image (and 3d cameras as well) but for the most part any photo we take is going to be seen by the photographer in 3d and then taken by the camera in 2d. Assuming an image is initially sharp from front to rear, imagining the horizon as your background and then mentally adding each of the objects in the scene on top of that, can be a help in making the choice of which aperture to use. Anything which isn’t strictly a part of the story of an image is fair game for being blurred or made sharper according to the need of either the foreground or background.

Still assuming an image which is sharp from front to rear, mentally adding objects to a background one by one (or mentally focussing on specific objects in the same way that you would if you listened to a scene) can also tell you if other factors such as gestalt perception are inadvertently coming into play. Gestalt perception is a subject all of its own but for the purposes of this post, suffice to say that sometimes you may want to use it, other times not. The important thing is to see in your mind how the image will look when it’s printed out on a canvas or on the page of a magazine. Is there a bright red phonebox in the background that’s going to drag the viewers eye away from the subject? Is the horizon at neck level so the subject looks like they’ve been guilotined? Perhaps you can lower your angle of sight so that the river the boat is sailing upon becomes hidden and the boat looks as if it’s travelling a cross a field?

As I say, the important thing is to take control of the composition by seeing it in your mind first. Tesla created some amazing things purely through visualising them and then imagining how they would function, either individually or as part of a greater whole. It’s a skill or ability we use less and less these days, with the advent of calculators as one example that lessen the need to perform mental arithmetic. Despite that, it is still something that can be practiced. The next time you’re sat in a cafe, close your eyes for a moment and listen to what’s around you. Try to put a name to the different sounds you hear and you’ll realise there are a lot of things that your sight or your mind has discarded as irrelevant. Are they irrelevant? Perhaps. It’s better to find out at the time though, than later when you’re back home and hoping Photoshop will save the day.

Ok, I was going to end there but instead, go back to the image I posted at the beginning. Maybe it’s me, I think it’s one of those images that will mean different things to different people but, take a look at it. A jumble of colours? Water flowing over rocks? Maybe. Perhaps there’s an emerald eagle looking out through the water as well? We see in many ways