Perception and Imaging, Third Edition

How do you experience a photograph? What do you want a viewer to feel when they look at your image?

Perception and Imaging explains how we see and what we don't see. Relevant psychological principles will help you predict your viewer's emotional reaction to your photographic images, giving you more power, control, and tools for communicating your desired message. Knowing how our minds work helps photographers, graphic designers, videographers, animators, and visual communicators both create and critique sophisticated works of visual art. Benefit from this insight in your work.

Topics covered in this book: gestalt grouping, memory and association, space, time, color, contours, illusion and ambiguity, morphics, personality, subliminals, critiquing photographs, and rhetoric.

�Provocative color images demonstrate the power of visual perception
�Photographs by Bresson, Bruce Davidson, Nathan Lyons, Lisette Model, Barbara Morgan, Man Ray, August Sander, Pete Turner, and Edward Weston
�Paintings by Degas, Escher, Hockney, Holbein, Kandinsky, Magritte and Warhol
�Hundreds of inspirational quotes from famous photographers, painters, and writers

This is a book on photography and seeing, not just for those who capture and create images, but also for those who use them and write about them. Richard Zakia has a way of writing about photographs that is practical and relevant to how we see things.
With many examples of important photographs, paintings and advertisements, he reminds us that we don't often see all that there is to see. Instead, we tend to limit ourselves to seeing what we expect to see, thus missing the richness of many photographs.

Take, for example, my photograph of "Push", which is on the cover of Zakia's book. One might look at it and dismiss it as just another photograph of a trash can on a beach. But read what he had to say about it. You will be surprised and delighted by what you will learn and be able to apply to your own photography.

I found this book highly interesting and challenging, and I recommend it to anyone working in photography or related visual disciplines. -Pete Turner

One of the many outstanding features of "Perception and Imaging" is its irresistible friendliness. The layout is engaging, the illustrations varied and absorbing, the quotations from artists delightful and provocative. Whether you are looking for technical information, historical data or graphic challenges you will find it here in an easy-to-access format. Dr. Zakia's vision is all-encompassing: he is equally familiar with a 2000-year-old Sicilian mosaic and the latest in digital concepts. You don't want to miss this one.
-Corrine Whitaker