Answers to Selected Exercises

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Ezra Norton
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1 B Answers to Selected Exercises What is material, tangible and permanent to most people is ephemeral to me. Change is what I believe in. It is the essence of learning, growth and creativity. Wynn Bullock Parrot Tulips by Joanne Urban. (This photograph was not made with a camera. Flowers were arranged on a flat bed scanner and scanned at a high resolution.)

2 Perception and Imaging CHAPTER : GESTALT GROUPING Figure B. Answer to Exercise : Tangrams. Answer to Exercise : Tangrams I have always been impressed with the plastic qualities of American Indian art Their vision has the basic universal of all real art. Jackson Pollock Figure B. An important perceptual lesson can be learned from these simple puzzles. Do not impose limitations or constraints on yourself. Be imaginative, organize things differently, avoid habit. Sharpen things instead of leveling them and you will see and experience more. Answer to Exercise : Don t Be a Square Most people see the dot array as forming a square. This is predictable based on the Gestalt laws of similarity, proximity, continuity, and closure. Unconsciously, then, one assumes that the problem must be solved within the confines of that imaginary square. The moment this position is taken, the person is trapped and the problem is not solvable. Force yourself to think and see things in different ways, and by doing so you will produce new and exciting pictures. Look around at images you find interesting and creative and ask yourself why you find them so.

3 Appendix B Answers to Selected Exercises EEE 0 EEE 0 EEE 0 0 EEEE Answer to Exercise : Closure Challenge Figure B. Now that you have seen the cow, return to the original fragmented cow and watch the image pop out for you. CHAPTER : MEMORY AND ASSOCIATION Answer to Exercise : Vintage Photograph, The white-haired photographer and Rochester Institute of Technology professor is Minor White. His student sitting and taking notes is Peter Bunnell, who has made major contributions to photography as an author, scholar, curator at the Museum of Modern Art, Princeton University professor, and curator of photography at the Princeton University Art Museum (which includes the Minor White Archive). Bunnell retired from Princeton in 00. The photograph was taken in Rochester, New York in during the winter months. Minor has his hands in his pockets to keep warm while his students all wear winter gloves. He was teaching the Zone System at the time and had taken his students out to do some field-testing. Other Rochester Institute of Technology classmates of Peter and students of Minor were Carl Chiarenza, Bruce Davidson, Ken Josephson, Pete Turner, and Jerry Uelsmann, all who have made major contributions to the field. The photograph of Minor at the end of Chapter shows him in front of a large Weston meter dial, which he used as a visual aid. Minor liked the photo very much and sent a small print on to Ansel Adams. Ansel in turn commented on how much he liked it, saying it was the best photo of Minor that he had seen. He then wrote Minor that he looked angelic and asked for a larger print. He began the letter with Dear Olympian Sunrise.

4 Perception and Imaging CHAPTER : ILLUSIONS AND AMBIGUITY Figure B. Milan Convention Center. Answer to Exercise : Architectural Illusion The Weston attic photograph references the Necker cube illusion in which the cube reverses itself (see Figure.). One can also see the Necker cube in the Convention Center architecture near Milan, Italy. (See also Figure.B.) Answer to Exercise : Caged Tiger In the original photograph, the entire tiger was behind the fence. With some careful Photoshop work, part of the wire fence in front of the tiger s face was removed. Thus, with no overlapping wire, his face appears to be on the outside of the fence. Answer to Exercise : Sharpness You were correct if you counted four elephants. One is mostly hidden behind one of the other elephants, but did you notice that these were not real elephants, that they had no eyes. They are sculptures. Perhaps you sensed something strange about the elephants and were not sure what it was. Had the photograph been sharp, you would certainly have noticed that they were not real elephants. CHAPTER 0: CRITIQUE Answer to Exercise 0: Renoir s Luncheon Did you guess that the self-invited guest was inserted using Photoshop? In our digital age, this would be quite reasonable. The fact of the matter is, however,

5 Appendix B Answers to Selected Exercises EEE 0 EEE 0 EEE 0 0 EEEE that this is an actual unmanipulated photograph a straight photograph. This is how it was created. J. Seward Johnson had an exhibition of his three-dimensional renditions of familiar nineteenth-century paintings at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. Viewers were invited and encouraged to interact with the sculptures and actually become part of them, which I did by inviting myself to Renoir s Luncheon. This is what Mr. Johnson intended, as he wrote: I find it so moving to watch people interact with these sculptures. This is one thing that these pieces do they invite an intimacy with the paintings that paintings themselves don t allow simply due to the limitation of scale, depth and access. (J. Seward Johnson, Jr., Solid Impression, The Sculpture Foundation, Santa Monica, CA, 00, p. ) Were You Invited? is the title of the sculpture by J. Seward Johnson. 00 The Sculpture Foundation. CHAPTER : RHETORIC Answer to Exercise : Photographic Reality The Fuji ad photograph was very well thought-out and executed to create a highly believable illusion. It appears that the model in the middle was the photograph that was re-photographed along with two live models. Here are a couple of the clues that support this:. The middle towel produces a smooth-lined shadow, as if it were a sheet of paper that had been gently contoured. The other towels produce a line that matches the raised folds in the corresponding towels.. The blue sandals, hat, radio, and handbag were placed on the center photo to hold it down since the photograph was shot outdoors near a swimming pool where it might be a bit windy during the shoot. These added items are three-dimensional, creating shadows of confusion. (The ad is also a good example of the Zeigarnik effect (nonclosure). A person keeps trying to unravel the puzzle to form closure and by doing so continues to be engaged in the ad.)

Object Perception. 23 August PSY Object & Scene 1

Object Perception. 23 August PSY Object & Scene 1 Object Perception Perceiving an object involves many cognitive processes, including recognition (memory), attention, learning, expertise. The first step is feature extraction, the second is feature grouping