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Framing Aesthetic Judgments
Painters, photographers, and graphic designers regularly face the problem of how to frame the subjects of their creations in aesthetically pleasing ways. We investigated people's aesthetic responses to the position, facing direction, and size of single objects within rectangular frames using free choices in taking actual photographs and 2AFC preferences. The experiments tested the validity of rules of thumb taught in the visual arts, most of which have never been tested experimentally. One example is the "facing rule:" if the subject of the work has horizontal directionality (e.g., a sideview of a person, car, or teapot), it should point into rather than out of the frame. An experiment testing this rule examined subjects' aesthetic preferences for pictures of objects pointing into and out of the frame as a function of their position and directionality. In the directional (sideview) conditions, preferences were found for objects pointing into versus out of the frame. In both the directional and nondirectional (frontview) conditions, subjects tended to prefer objects positioned at the center of the frame. Further experiments examined preferences for the size of objects relative to the frame and its interaction with position and directionality. The results are discussed in terms of the power of the center in visual art (Arnheim, 1988). People prefer the subject to be located in the center of the frame, but if an object is not in the center, they prefer it to be oriented toward the center. Joint Effects of Height-in-the-Picture-Plane and Distance-Relative-to-the-Horizon in Pictorial Depth Perception
Height in the picture plane (or height in the field) is known as a powerful and salient depth cue (Dunn, 1965). Rock (1975) found that the distance to the horizon also affects judgments of depth: objects that are located closer to the horizon line are seen as more distant. Height in the picture plane can work independently of distance to the horizon: the horizon itself can be placed at different heights in the frame, affecting the depth of objects, even if distance to the horizon is held constant. Additionally, distance to the horizon can vary if the horizon line changes but the object position in the frame stays the same. However, when the object is located on the ceiling plane, these two depth cues can be seen to conflict - an object on the ceiling plane may be high in the picture plane but far from the horizon. Using a 2AFC paradigm, we examined the depth cues of height in the picture plane and distance to the horizon to determine the way in which information from these depth cues is obtained and combined. Exploring aesthetic principles of spatial composition through stock photography
Past research in our laboratory (Palmer, Gardner & Wickens, in press; Palmer & Gardner, VSS 2007) has shown robust and systematic aesthetic preferences for the horizontal position and direction of a single object within a frame. In particular, people prefer the object to be laterally positioned near the center of the frame (the "center bias") and to face into, rather than out of, the frame (the "inward bias"). In the present research we extend these findings with experimentally manipulated images to the vertical dimension, where we find a strong "lower bias" for objects supported from below (e.g., a cup or bowl) and an "upper bias" for those supported from above (e.g., a ceiling light). We also investigated the extent to which these horizontal and vertical biases are manifest in aesthetically pleasing natural images outside the laboratory by analyzing images from the Corel database of stock photography. Observers viewed hundreds of images that they judged to contain just one or two focal objects and indicated where they perceived the center of the visible portions of these objects to be located. Using these data, we examined evidence for the center, inward, lower, and upper biases found in our previous laboratory research separately for one- and two-object pictures. We also tested models of people's judgments about the location of the center of the visible portion of an object (e.g. bounding-box, center of mass, geometrical center, etc.). Representational Transparency in Aesthetic Judgments of Spatial Composition:
Effects of Object Position and Size
Previous research has shown robust, systematic aesthetic preferences for the horizontal position and facing direction of single objects within rectangular frames (Palmer, Gardner & Wickens, 2008; Gardner & Palmer, VSS-2006, VSS-2008). People prefer an object to be laterally positioned near the center (the "center bias") and to face into, rather than out of, the frame (the "inward bias"). Similar, but more complex, biases occur in the vertical dimension: a "lower bias" for objects supported from below and viewed from above (a bowl on a table), an "upper bias" for objects supported from above and viewed from below (a light fixture on a ceiling), and a "center bias" for symmetrical images of gravitationally unsupported objects (a flying eagle viewed from directly below or above). The object's characteristic ground-relative position in the world also affects people's preferences for vertical placement: eagles are preferred higher and stingrays lower in the frame. Real-world compatibility in the size domain also affects aesthetic judgments: a mouse picture is preferred when it is smaller within the frame and an elephant when it is larger (Konkle & Oliva VSS-2007). Canonical perspectives (Palmer, Rosch & Chase, 1981) also produce higher preference ratings for pictures of objects (Khalil & McBeath, VSS-2006). These effects can be unified by the "representational transparency" hypothesis: observers prefer images in which the spatial characteristics of depicted objects in the world are optimally reflected in analogous spatial properties of the image. This has both a real-world-position component (eagles higher, stingrays lower) and a viewer-relative component (objects viewed from below are preferred higher, objects viewed from above are preferred lower). Representational transparency provides a reasonable first-order approximation of default expectations for people's aesthetic responses, but greater aesthetic value often requires violating these expectations in meaningful ways that reflect the intentions of the artist. All of the above research is funded in part by NSF Grant BCS-0745820 to Stephen E. Palmer and by a gift from Google, Inc. |
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