Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Psychological Difference Between the Same Subject, Painted and Photographed

Painting in a sense was humankind's first attempt at capturing scenes of notability for enjoyment after the fact. Photography is just the evolution of that quest. Printed photographs are essentially just ink art done in a very fine style of pointillism, by a machine. A human could attempt to replicate this by hand, and given the patience, accuracy, time, and focus could no doubt accomplish a very similar product. However, I think that photography captures the emotion and the expression of the moment far better, and I think humans can see that, or rather feel it. I can't say what it is that would trigger such a feeling, perhaps a slight difference in colour or shading, possibly knowing that it is a painting or a photograph, but I think the real trigger for people is depth. Photography captures the depth of a scene incredibly well, with detail from background to foreground (even when out of focus). Photography has developed to see almost exactly like the eye, there is very little room for interpreting a scene any other way than what it shows, their is no room for "artistic licence", even if unintentional, the way their would be in a painting. That is what I think the psychological difference between a painted and photographed object are.  

No comments:

Post a Comment