Do all humans view a composition from left to right?

Hi,

 

Some researchers at the Univ of Minnesota child development department

have done quite a number of eye movement studies on infants. I have

photographed some of the adademics involved in this research, and have

had the opportunity to listen to them talk about their research during

newspaper interviews.

 

I can't cite the research I'm talking about, or even remember the name of the

researchers, without going to a whole lot of effort. But my recollection is that

they found that a predictable scanning direction is NOT present in very young

infants, but that it typically sets in well BEFORE a child starts to read. Also, the

scanning direction that sets in, at least for the infants from the upper mid-west

studied, is left to right and top to bottom.

 

As a matter of photographic composition, however, it may be good to know

about this kind of thing, but certainly not to be a slave to it. A predisposition to

scan left to right can easily be trumped by a bright red color anywhere else in

the frame other than the upper left.

 

Which then brings up the question, are we acculturated to see the color red as

dominant? This discussion could go on for a while.

 

Tom

I don't think our eye would jump to the red spot because it is dominant, but because it is different.

I like to add something. Scanning habits might be important, but max 30%, probably less.

 

There has been research on what people do watch how long if they are viewing pictures. What I rememeber is, that most time in watching pictures of people is spend on the subjects eyes (even when impressive titts are showed too).

 

So the scanning habits might play a role in unimportant, non artsy, by-the-way-pictures, like the GIF of stairs posted above. There must be more important stuff about really great pictures / compositions.

 

I don't always shoot RFs or prism finders. So a additional question is how does the use of WLFs or groundglasses goof up your photographic habits? Have you ever had thoughts like "Damn - I forgot about the ****ing WLF again!" in your darkroom? On which kind of subject? - I suppose there were some portraits which I should have composed into the other direction.

<B>My comments were: <I>"I also find it fascinating to discover that many (most?) humans 'naturally' scan an image from left to right (same as reading) and that you should compose your compositions accordingly to benefit from this.<P>

 

It gets me wondering if this scanning from left to right is a 'western world' phenomenon.</I></B><P>

This last bit is correct. Assuming that every human being will "naturally" scan from left to right (or any other direction) is ethnocentric rubbish.

Thank you to all of you for contributing to this discussion.<br>

<br>

What a wonderful way to start my day with reading new contibutions to this, and other meaningful discussion threads.<br>

<br>

Warm regards. M

Michael - I read a study on what babies look at. When confronted with pictures of people or actual people, they zero in on the eyes immediately - or eye-shaped objects, as noticed when shown pictures of certain butterfly wings, stuffed olives etc. From the eyes, the babies glance ranged outward, circling the edges of the object with the "eye" then to the mouth if it was a face - but always going back to the eyes. I suspect people view photographs based on a central point of interest, out to the margins, back to the center of interest... ranging across a photo as the photo dictates, and not as text would dictate. I think, to verify that, you can think of how you look across a landscape. Typically, you don't look left to right ("Western" text) but probably at a focal point and out/back - scanning for whatever catches the primitive part of the brain that's always assessing the environment. Interesting question :)

I seem to remember some research done on perception where eye movement was

monitored. The eye was seen to travel around the image top left > top right > bottom

right > bottom left > top left. This circular motion was carried out several time in a lot

less than a second.

The eye apparently scans the image rapidly several times whilst the brain looks for

anything of interest. If it discovers nothing then the eye wanders away.

This all happens so rapidly that we are not conciously aware of it.

Experimenters found that simple devices (basic compositional techniques) could be used

to 'direct' the eye back into the image. this kept the viewer's attention for longer and they

felt that the image was 'more interesting'.

I actually tried this out once. I had a student who had taken a photo he was disappointed

with. It was 'boring'. It was a landscape that had a hedgerow starting at the bottom right

and going diagonally up towards top left.

I reversed the neg and printed it so the hedgerow went from bottom left to top right.

Everyone immediately thought the picture was much more interesting.

It would appear that composition has some basis in perceptual psychology.

As far as I can ascertain no work of a similar kind has been done on ethnic groups.

It would be intriguing if peoples who wrote, say, from right to left still looked at pictures

from left to right.

Anyone up for giving me a research grant?

In art-school we were taught that by far most people scan images from left to right, independent of culture.

 

Try looking at Botticelli's Venus in a mirror.

 

And as they said; if you're going to do something wrong, do it to the right (meaning a composition that is heavy on the right side will not suffer from it as much as one that is heavy on the left side).

 

The last poster's mentioning of the hedge in the photo is a good example of basic compositional rules. Before he flipped the picture the diagonals were leading the eyes out of the composition.

 

Sorry if I'm a little fuzzy here, it's 05.30 a.m. here, and I'm at work. :)

Errr, just a side note on Chinese, it goes from right to left, left to right, AND top to bottom...wouldn't believe the number of times I've been stuffed up by reading in the wrong direction (with my limited character vocabulary)...

 

...anyway, I tend to view images oddly, I tend to jump to the most visually interesting area of the image (the ones with more tonal variation or contrast), jump around a bit, then do the left to right perusal.