Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Photography
The “pure” photographic image has become the preeminent form of il-
lustration in recent years. One reason for this might be the speed at which photographs
transmit information—their realism and directness allow a viewer to enter the image
and process it very quickly, rather than get distracted by abstract pictorial issues such
as texture, medium, and composition. Access speed in imagery has become important
because the flood of visual messages encountered by the average viewer requires im-
ages to compete robustly for attention. While composition plays an important role in
the quality of the photographic image and its messaging potential, its presence as a me-
diating phenomenon is much harder to recognize and, therefore, is often overlooked on
a conscious level by the viewer. This suggests another reason for the primacy of photo-
graphs as communicators: the fact of the image's mediation (or manipulation)—through
composition, selective focus, lighting, cropping, and other techniques—is secondary to
the acceptance of photographic images as “real.” This provides the designer with an up-
per hand in persuasion, on behalf of a client, because the work of convincing a viewer
that he or she can believe or trust the image is already well on its way to being achieved:
“I saw it with my own eyes.” Today's average viewer, although much more sophist-
icated and attuned to the deceptive potential of photography than viewers in previous
generations—who were unfamiliar with photography's use to disguise, manipulate, or
enhance—is still much more likely to accept the content of a photograph as truth than
that of an illustration, simply because the illustration is obviously contrived; the con-
trivance possible in a photograph is not so readily appreciated.
Real, Unreal, and Otherwise
Media and Methods
Presentation Options
Content and Concept
