The Camera and the Brain follows two photons on their different paths: One flies through the lens of a camera onto a photographic sensor, and is transformed into a part of a photograph. The other one flies through the lens of a human eye, onto the retina, to be converted into a human percept. I discuss the perception of motion, scale and color, the constant scanning movements of our eyes called saccades, and the recognition of objects like faces. I also explain the fundamental difference between perceiving and photographing. The book is illustrated with my own photographs and illustrations by Anna Farrell.
A noted philosopher draws on the empirical results and conceptual resources of cognitive neuroscience to address questions about the nature of knowledge. In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation—or "takes a picture"—of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.
Right Brain Photography, an award-winning book, is for photographers who want to get the most out of their cameras, without spending hours in front of the computer, but yet want high quality professional results. It covers both the creative aesthetics and technical know-how sides of photography. You will learn about being an artist first, photographer second; see with your imagination, not your eyes; see something before you see it; how to make the common uncommon and the mundane insane. The book starts off with an emphasis on starting with the end in mind. The reader is immediately engaged with right brain exercises which the author introduces to get the mind stimulated. Eli has created three photography models, or paradigms, which he shares in his book, now in its fourth edition: "I S.E.E. SOMETHING," "ELI'S 5-POINT PHOTO ART MODEL," and "THE PHOTO IMAGE CREATION PROCESS." He also spends an entire chapter on the subject of composition, which he learned during his college art days, and which he feels is becoming a lost art among photographers. Throughout the book "challenge assignments" are introduced to encourage readers to apply what they learned, but in real life situations. They are intended to connect the dots. Most highly experienced professional photographers do not share the stage with other photographers, especially in a book about their photography. Eli does. He showcases eight of his students' works to show what other photographers create when they apply his principles, concepts, paradigms, and techniques. Right Brain Photography has over 130 eye-catching images that serve to illustrate lessons taught.
In Blow-Up, a collection of essays that tackle aesthetics from the angle of neuroscience, Warren Neidich proposes a different and wholly original paradigm for thinking through cultural history and the philosophy of the human subject. Across the theoretical landscape that Neidich describes, even familiar monuments from the history of art, architecture, philosophy and aesthetics appear strange and disorienting, because the starting point of the primary and secondary repertoires (the nervous system and the pathways of connection built up through interaction between the brain and the outside world) is so totally unexpected. Crucial to Neidich's narrative is the idea that, in modernity, the technologies that have evolved in the sphere of visual communication have come to operate on the subject with particular vehemence, not only in the realm of meaning but in their determining influence on the primary habits and dispositions of experience. Photography, cinema, television, the internet--as the forces of spectacle gain ever-wider currency in a rapidly globalizing world, those cultural forms that emerge as dominant in the competition for structuring the pathways of consciousness will annex and colonize more and more of the subject's interior life, worldwide. But Neidich suggests that the subject of culture has the ability to remap itself, rewire itself, and assume forms so creative and protean that it will always outrun the forces that seek to limit its plasticity--even trauma and amputation cannot irreversibly damage the neural body.
An "elegant", "engrossing" (Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal) examination of what we think we know about the brain and why -- despite technological advances -- the workings of our most essential organ remain a mystery. "I cannot recommend this book strongly enough."--Henry Marsh, author of Do No Harm For thousands of years, thinkers and scientists have tried to understand what the brain does. Yet, despite the astonishing discoveries of science, we still have only the vaguest idea of how the brain works. In The Idea of the Brain, scientist and historian Matthew Cobb traces how our conception of the brain has evolved over the centuries. Although it might seem to be a story of ever-increasing knowledge of biology, Cobb shows how our ideas about the brain have been shaped by each era's most significant technologies. Today we might think the brain is like a supercomputer. In the past, it has been compared to a telegraph, a telephone exchange, or some kind of hydraulic system. What will we think the brain is like tomorrow, when new technology arises? The result is an essential read for anyone interested in the complex processes that drive science and the forces that have shaped our marvelous brains.
If you've ever been tricked by an optical illusion, you'll have some idea about just how clever the relationship between your eyes and your brain is. This book leads one through the intricacies of the subject and demystifying how we see.
Art historians have long speculated on how Vermeer achieved the uncanny mixture of detached precision, compositional repose, and perspective accuracy that have drawn many to describe his work as "photographic." Indeed, many wonder if Vermeer employed a camera obscura, a primitive form of camera, to enhance his realistic effects? In Vermeer's Camera, Philip Steadman traces the development of the camera obscura--first described by Leonaro da Vinci--weighs the arguments that scholars have made for and against Vermeer's use of the camera, and offers a fascinating examination of the paintings themselves and what they alone can tell us of Vermeer's technique. Vermeer left no record of his method and indeed we know almost nothing of the man nor of how he worked. But by a close and illuminating study of the paintings Steadman concludes that Vermeer did use the camera obscura and shows how the inherent defects in this primitive device enabled Vermeer to achieve some remarkable effects--the slight blurring of image, the absence of sharp lines, the peculiar illusion not of closeness but of distance in the domestic scenes. Steadman argues that the use of the camera also explains some previously unexplainable qualities of Vermeer's art, such as the absence of conventional drawing, the pattern of underpainting in areas of pure tone, the pervasive feeling of reticence that suffuses his canvases, and the almost magical sense that Vermeer is painting not objects but light itself. Drawing on a wealth of Vermeer research and displaying an extraordinary sensitivity to the subtleties of the work itself, Philip Steadman offers in Vermeer's Camera a fresh perspective on some of the most enchanting paintings ever created.
This book teaches photographers how to connect fully with the visual richness present in their ordinary, daily experiences. According To The authors, photography is not purely a mechanical process. You need to know how to look, As well as where to point the camera, and when to press the button. Then as you develop your ability to see, your appreciation and inspiration from the world around you become enhanced. Filled with practical exercises and techniques inspired by mindfulness meditation, this book teaches photographers how to "see what's in front of them". It offers a system of training and exercises that draw upon Buddhist concepts, As well as on insights of great photographic masters such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. There is a series of visual exercises and assignments for working with texture, light, and colour, As well as for developing mindfulness, As a way of bringing the principles of contemplative photography into ordinary experience.
