Insight

My recent image series ‘Decline’ suggests self reflection, a process which can then lead to insight.

It seems this is how our ideas about the world shape the way we perceive and experience it. Consequently the world around us is a reflection of ourselves.

On Wikipedia the self is defined as ‘the subject of one’s own experience of phenomena’

We have no direct connection with reality, everything comes through our biological computer, the brain. Visual information taken in through our eyes is processed here.

Insight can be loosely described as ‘seeing within’ or perhaps the understanding of what you observe. And this is a continual process of re-evaluation, of perception and reasoning, of outlook and looking in. New understanding can happen gradually or suddenly, as in the light-bulb effect!

The mind is our model of the universe built up from insights by which we become ‘self aware’.

Our insight defines our reality, our awareness of ourselves filters how we look at the world.

Photography is a great medium to understand the way we look at the world, no two people shoot same way, its all filtered – and even more so recently using post production - reflecting the way you look at the world.

In fact the analogy can go further, when comparing capture and processing. The capture of the sensory information onto the retina is the raw file and the understanding or revealing of the image is created by the process. For film this is done using chemicals at a lab. You can even cross process, a method of using a positive process for negative film or a negative process for positive film (colour slides).

With digital the capture is data and the process is the editing of this data, including the effects added. Now everyone is a photographer, its interesting to see how people use the editing and filter effects to shape their image. On Instagram, you could tell a lot about a
persons outlook by studying the way they present their images, their world.

Of course the way others view your images is similarly coloured by their outlook, the way they look out at the world. They may see different ideas and have different feelings
about an image, which is why some ambiguity is good thing so viewers can bring
their world to your images and relate to them in their own way.

As William Blake said ‘‘The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the
eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way’