Weekly Black and White Photography Thread # 30 (24Aug 2025)

I guess it is being a natural born lefty forced to also develop my right, I prefer the flow from right to left in the bottom image. It seems a little more natural to me. This is an interesting question.

I'm still not sure what you're asking here other than which better conforms to memory or experience. Besides just because you flip them on the horizontal axis doesn't then define the flow as being a choice between left-right/right-left. I could just as easily say both flow near-far. As I said, it's still a weighted question because you still define the categories and force the observer to choose between how you think, rather than understand how they see.

A better test would be to show both images, one after the other (viewed together we see the relative difference in that they have been flipped horizontally - again you have to understand the nature of human perception and how that can force an answer), then ask if the viewer perceived any flow, which direction, and which preference.

Well, I posted a scene that I'm confident not only has no one here ever seen, very few people anywhere have seen. So, it has nothing to do with conforming to memory since no one has seen it but me. As for conforming to experience, how? What about that scene makes LR conform to experience more than RL, or vice-versa?

I'll take it a step further -- there are people who might see no flow at all. Others might see a wiggly flow going up, down, left, and right. Who knows? I'm not a mind reader. Here's what I do know: I took a photo that I think has a horizontal flow. I posted the original photo and a horizontal flip of the photo. Now, whatever you think the flow of the photo is, if any flow at all, is one of the two photos "more natural" than the other? Again, one is a "real" photo of the actual scene. The other is a horizontal flip of it. So far as I can tell, there are no clues, whatsoever, as to which photo is the correct orientation of the scene (maybe there are, and I just missed them, but I didn't notice them).

However, people may perceive one or the other as being "more natural", "more pleasing", or whatever, than the other. Two people responded giving a preference for the RL photo (the photos where the road is wider -- due to perspective -- at the bottom of the frame). Myself, I am curious if the two photos were shown to a hundred people, how many would say RL is "more natural", how many would say LR is "more natural", and how many would say neither is "more natural".

After all, I'm sure you are aware that the scene could be either one of the photos. Physics doesn't make one of them "more realistic" than the other -- if a billionaire weren't too busy fucking up the world, they could spend a little of that money and actually make both scenes a reality, and it would cost the same for each of them and require the same effort for each of them.

But here's what you can say: you can say that one of them seems "more natural" because of how your brain processes the photos. You can even say that the reason I took the photo in the first place is because, the scene being what it was, appealed to me in some way that I didn't understand but would not have appealed to me had the actual scene been the horizontal flip of the scene I took the photo of.

For example, I might see some woman and think she's gorgeous. But if I had seen her mirror image twin, I'd not have thought that. I mean, it's possible. I don't know. It's even a thing in actual physics. For whatever reason, even though there is nothing (that we're aware of) that makes left handed spin different from right handed spin (parity violation, which is responsible for matter in the universe that would have otherwise been annihilated by equal amounts of anti-matter). Likewise, there might be something going on in our brains, either innate or cultural, that makes people favor one orientation over another (on average) as either "more natural" or "more pleasing", even though there is nothing about one scene that is any more "realistic" than the horizontal flip of the scene (where by "realistic", I mean either scene could equally exist).

That is not the question I am asking. I am presenting two photos and asking which is "more natural". I am not asking if a flow is perceived or what the direction of the flow is if perceived. I mean, maybe someone sees the LR photo as having a TB or BT flow and sees the RL photo as having an LR flow. Who knows? Either way, that's a different question than what I'm asking (although that would be an interesting question, too).

Here, I'll change the question just for you:

I have a photo that I'm going to print and frame at 24 x 36 inches, and donate to a charity auction. However, I tried a horizontal flip of the photo and am wondering which of the two to upload for printing and framing. Presuming that you don't care which of the two is "more real" (the horizontally flipped photo is "less real" than the original photo, but presuming you don't care about that aspect of "reality", you just want to donate the photo that you think will auction off for the most money) then which one would you order?

I mean, that's a reasonable question to ask, right? It's not the same question I asked, 'cause I'm not asking which of the two is "more natural"; rather, I'm indirectly asking which is more pleasing, which is a different question. In any case, it's not really a question that I'm asking here, because, as I said earlier, there aren't enough people here to really get enough votes in to make it meaningful. Even if 10 people responded all saying LR, that doesn't really tell me much (especially given that the responses are not independent -- that is, they see what other people have said before responding which, of course, can easily influence their response).

Anyway...

I did try to explain to you why presenting the same image one above the other is a perceptual trap because it reveals more about the way we process information than it does about the absolute properties of either image. So I'll try again, stay with it as the point is in italics.

Colour. I know it's odd to discuss colour on a B&W thread, but... You know the pyisical property of light is wavelength and how physics describes light and the way it behaves. So explain "Additive Colour" with physics.

You can't. This is because additive colour describes the human visual system and how we perceive colour. We don't see colour in the way that physics describes. The Colour Wheel and complementary opposite colours such as red-green and blue-yellow are created entirely by the way the human eye is configured and works. Physics doesn't describe the colour you see in images, you must also understand and take into account the nature of the instrument you use to do the comparison.

To think that the differences between the real physical world and how you see it through human eyes neatly stops at colour and in all other aspects is absolute? Absolute tosh!

Perspective. If you park perceptual traits and only look at the physical limitations of the human visual system and that we can only ever view from a single unique viewpoint then the maths alone shows you why it's blindingly obvious that we can't see the world as described by linear geometry. I'll go one step further, it's also blindingly obvious that the maths perfectly describes camera images and what we "perceptually" label as "distortions". In fact it should be quite clear that the reason we see and label the correct geometry as presented in images as "distortions" is simply because we can't see the world of linear geometry as correctly described by them, so they obviously look different. In short the difference between linear geometry and what we see describes the nature of human vision and NOT the nature of linear geometry.

Had a long conversation with someone a while ago, and still can't seem to get this simple point across. And the reason is that buried in the language, and you can see it as clear as day, the unchallenged and unproven base assumption that what is seen is correct. That in describing the way linear perspective draws a scene comes the automatic and unchallenged assumption that one can see that difference, so apply the maths to define that difference, and so automatically and randomly keep swapping between absolute and perceived and in so doing, applying the maths of linear perspective directly to the perceptual in a quite random and unscientific way. It becomes little more than an exercise in confirmation bias; I see it, therefore it it true.

This is the danger, by attributing the visual directly to the measured we also apply the reasoning we applied to the measured directly to visual perception without even considering if it is correct or in any way valid. We just assume that because we see the "real" world then the world we see is real and so follows real physics. As you can see above, you have to allow for the nature of the instrument through which you make the comparisons.

In our conversation about equivalence you interchanged "measured" with "visual" and also at one point made the claim that the way the camera and human eye see are comparable without any proof. Sorry GB, take your response above and my reply and have it peer reviewed, and I think they'll say exactly the same as I'm about to; you fall down so many perceptual traps that the whole of the above is littl emore than confirmation bias.

Really, complete conjecture, nothing to do with 2D photos, besides you're obviously not a builder... 😁

I say that if you were to do a correct test that you would have a number of groups and a number of images, then vary the way they were presented to the different groups, one way/different way/third way/mix between, with a control group just getting a random sample. I think you'll find what your test is designed to avoid, that differences in perception have a far stronger link to viewing conditions than they do to the absolute changes you've made to the image.

Sorry again GB, I don't question your technical knowledge of photography, you continually fail to allow that I might actually know what I'm talking about with this subject. Time to take the blinkers off.

Errrmmm... Aren't all portraits already a mirror image? Do we actually have any preference before we decide to do a direct comparison of the same image flipped? Again what is it that you actually reveal here, a visual preference to measured differences in the image or the way we process information?

Remember the upside down portrait I posted on the last discussion?

Besides, one of the main attributes of photographic "beauty" is a greater degree of symmetry in the face.

[EDIT] Just to be clear here, you create a specific situation, "same image reversed", where the difference is absolute and measurable then attribute any perceptual difference directly to the measurable difference in the photo. You make no allowance that the "same image reversed" and the way you display them, is a special case that actually reveals more about the way we assimilate and process information than it does about visual preference, or even prove that we do have any visual preference before confronted with the "same image reversed". Or even accept that the test of the "same image reversed" may be invalid because it doesn't conform to or reveal the nature of any of our selective criteria when we choose to prefer one real image over another, that it's a purely manufactured scenario.

And yet still apply your findings globally to explain visual preference.

It is difficult to talk about movement in an image without talking about leading lines. All the examples given are actually more about leading lines. Daneland's original image is all about geometric leading lines leading left and right. The interesting part is the leading lines in this image were somewhat in conflict. One set of leading lines are leading toward the woman ready to exit the scene while the others are leading away - creating tension. That is what I find interesting about this image. The color street scene - the road is a classic example of a leading line - leading the viewers eye from the front to the back though the village. I would say here it is not so much about movement but about adding depth to the image.

I hope the flow of this photo is in the "correct" direction.

Steve Thomas

Good one, Steve. The trouble with this thread is the titanic controversy with yards and yards of verbiage and no sign of an end to it.

Of course.

My apologies for the length of my responses or any perception that I must be giving that I'm "preaching". It really is a difficult topic, but if we want to discuss perceptual and artistic intent then we really need to move beyond the forum staple of linking perception directly to measurable absolutes in the image and science, we need to make the perceptual link between shape and memory. As I said a difficult topic, and again my apologies for seeming to hijack the thread.