pico Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 Mental experiment <p> Today I attended a lecture that was not about philosophy, and it had no visual content so I closed my eyes and wondered what the visual intellectual world of a philosopher might be. It is clear that some philosophical tomes require no vision whatsoever; their concise use of words, definitions of the same, and in some cases the invention of new words, suffice to contain their concepts. <p> But all people "see". <p> What do you think a blind philosopher would conceive of things like Tone, Contrast, Composition, Color <u>as they are written of here</u>? <p> What do you think a philosopher trained in his field, the crafts of logic, rhetoric, and multi-cultural thought-processes might have to say about some of the nonvisual content here, our philosophica musings? <p> It might be interesting to see where this goes without pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wigwam jones Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 </ul> <p>As a photographer who is not blind, but who is color-blind, I can report that when you show a photo that has a strong color component in it to me, I may miss the point. I've never seen a rainbow; I suspect that those who ooh and ahh over one are seeing something I cannot imagine. That, or you're all crazy.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrstubbs Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 Tone, Contrast, Composition, Color? Camber, Temperature, comfort and sound. In black and white.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
devin Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 I have a very good friend who is in his 60's and has been blind since birth. I would hardly call him a philosopher, but he has an excellent understanding of visual terms such as tone, contrast, composition, color, etc... Over the years he has mapped those terms to appropriate sensations from his other senses. Consequently, he enjoys sunsets, movies and other visual experiences. He very much likes to see things, and he only uses terms such as "touch" and "feel" if they are used in the way sighted people do use them. Yes, he "sees" by touching, but he doesn't view it like that. I've shown him some of my photography, but to give him the best idea of what it looked like, I had someone else describe it to him. That way he could understand the image from the standpoint of a third party observer. hmmm...did all that make sense? I'm writing a bit disjointedly today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pablito_pistola Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 Philosophers are about the most non-visual people I know. And I know lots of them. I work at a university.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michelle a. Posted February 21, 2007 Share Posted February 21, 2007 As a very visual person I've often wondered how life would be if I could not see the things that make life so very beautiful to me.....I may be totally missing the point.... I don't consider myself to be a philosphizing (is that even a word) person at all.... but I can't fathom how one conceives tone, contrast, composition.... if one has never had the fortune to be able to "see" them first hand. However I do believe in thinking about this a bit more that colors can be described in terms of smell..... Green is the color of fresh cut grass, and pine needles.... Red is the color of a ripe strawberry.... get my drift.... Again.... I may be totally missing the point here.... and I apologize for my ignorance if I am..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted February 21, 2007 Author Share Posted February 21, 2007 Dear Moderator - please strike strike Anthony Stubbs. His "contribution" is just noise. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrstubbs Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 So pico. You want to be anonymous and tell the world what to do. You want to talk about blind philosophers and their take on photography...and only want answers which suit you. Do I have it correctly? I guess I could have a bash at being a floormat for you but it's thursday and everybody knows thursday is for photography....woops...sorry...pictures. Let's not do our laundry here.<div></div> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted February 22, 2007 Author Share Posted February 22, 2007 Stubble:, Be brave and make a rational statement instead of nonsense and irrelevant pictures. Try it. What's your particular agenda? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellis_vener_photography Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 "Tone, Contrast, Composition, Color" I think of Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder. Music is also described with these words these words. Why do we never talk of photographs as having tempo even though a photograph can give you the impression of speed or restfulness, and most great photographs certainly have a visual rhythm to them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
root Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 We don't use the word tempo because rhythm covers it. www.rhythmimages.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrstubbs Posted February 22, 2007 Share Posted February 22, 2007 Find yourself a pacifier pico. Your drivel is annoying to say the least. You do not own this or any other space. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted February 23, 2007 Author Share Posted February 23, 2007 <i> Your drivel is annoying to say the least.</i><p> Coming from you, that's a compliment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studor13 Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 Can't quite remember the name of the film or the philosophical angle, but there was this Aussie film where the main theme was based around a blind guy who went around taking photos! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Herbert Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 have a visual rhythm to them. I like that thought which is so true. Rhythm i suppose is not just about sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gale Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 Well, I beleive we all fall in love with only that which we want to fall in love with. As vive Pres over a local Photo Club, we have speakers and advancement programs. We try to hold our critiques to a positive tone rather than negative to enhance progression of talent. Even with our Juried shows with "profesional" judges, we see winnning photos differ greatly, month to month and year to year. While the composition, tone and contrast stays the same in the photo, the judges eyes change daily. I have a point and I am getting to it. I wonder if you could get more consistant critiques describing the photo to a blind man than to show them to a seeing man. But what the He** do I know? Dave Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dave_reichert1 Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 " I wonder if you could get more consistant critiques describing the photo to a blind man than to show them to a seeing man. But what the He** do I know? " Of course you would, but they'd first have to be consistently filtered through the eyes of the describer. Does that answer your (rhetorical) question? ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lee_crump Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 As photographers we try to convey beauty, uglienss, awe, the mundane, order, chaos, sanctity, evil and many many other things that have no existance outside of the human mind. In short we try to convey ideas with images. I would imagine conveying images with words is very similar step. If we connect the dots from concept to image to words perhaps the leap from concept to words is actually a simple leap. Anthony: I am also considarably baffeled by you inital post. Pico: Mine will be a much dimmer world the day I understand all before me. I will rush to that day by removing what I do not understand from my sight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lee_crump Posted February 25, 2007 Share Posted February 25, 2007 CORRECTION: I will NOT rush to that day by removing what I do not understand from my sight. So much for posting under the influence! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pico Posted February 26, 2007 Author Share Posted February 26, 2007 <i>I will NOT rush to that day by removing what I do not understand from my sight.</i><p> Nor will I. Insecurity is my friend. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
see_r Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 Consider that the concept of tone has is basis in aural perception rather than visual, although the concept is quite similar via both routes of perception. Consider Graham Nash's contribution first to multipart harmonies and then to the revolution of the image printing industry. Tone is important to both. Now what a philosopher trained in his field would say? I couln't care less. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael_alpert1 Posted February 28, 2007 Share Posted February 28, 2007 Philosophers from the time of Pythagoras have looked for order within the chaos of experience. Philosophers value order in the world and order in the world of ethics. In other words, every ethical decision has to do with choice. I don't think that photographic art, which responds directly to the things of the world, differs significantly from philosophy in that sense: it is an ordering of life and thus has a philosophical (and perhaps ethical) component. Whether philosophers in academies are visually literate is another (and for me less-interesting) question. What people who have been blind from birth understand about visual experience I suppose depends on their individual abilities to imagine what, in their experience, has never quite existed. Up to a point, we all can imagine what we haven't experienced; beyond that point, the universe is a pure and endless mystery. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jgalyon Posted March 22, 2007 Share Posted March 22, 2007 thank you so much Mr.Stubbs...although i find the question posed by pico in this thread to be intersting and worthy of discussion, that's where the "interest in" and "worth of" his words end for me. as long as the "blind man" can read or hear pico's diatribes...he will easily perceive a man who is most in love with his own voice. everywhere i go...every thread in existence...there's pico spewing an endless stream of what we refer to here in the South as "five dollar words". Just recently a new member who immediately related that he was a novice of novices, asked a very simple straighforward question. pico jumped in after every two or three posts with comments of various lengths, most of which were totally out of context to the original question and I'm certain...of absolutely value from a practical, hands-on perspective. Over SIXTY lines of "drivel"...just so he can hear his head roar. Unfortunately arrogance can speak, it just can't hear, or see...for if it could, it might shut the hell up and seek serious psychological counseling to get to the root of this incessant need to try to come off as being superior to others. God, if this guy could only hear himself... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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