Photography without visualisation

A couple of years ago I discovered something astonishing. Most people can close their eyes and see images, real or imagined, at will. Actual images, like they see through their eyes.

This seems like witchcraft to me. I close my eyes and all I see is the back of my eyelids, black, with maybe some visual effects caused by the lighting in the room I’m in. I mentioned this to friends and most were equally astonished that I couldn’t form mental images and wondered how I could possibly go through life without this ability.

It is a condition (though I hesitate to call it that) known as aphantasia, a name deriving from Aristotle’s description of the mind’s eye as “phantasia”, and one I first came across when a nascent scientific study on the subject was reported on the news. Before this I’d assumed that the mind’s eye was merely a metaphor to describe visual memory – surely people don’t actually “see” things in their minds – that would be crazy. It appears that about 2% of the population experiences this lack of mental imagery, though most people are on a spectrum, able to visualise with varying levels of “vividness” ranging from “just like being there” to “black”.

It’s a very difficult thing to explain because being unable to visualise doesn’t necessarily imply a lack of visual memory. For example I can describe my house, I can mentally walk through the rooms and reproduce the layout from memory. But I can’t say that I “see” what I’m describing, at least not anything close to what I can see with my eyes open. Ask me to visualise an elephant for example, and I can concentrate on parts of the elephant and mentally move from one part to another (think, perhaps, of sketching with disappearing ink), but ask me to visualise an elephant at a watering hole surrounded by trees and my brain just goes blank. At best I can perhaps see something vague and blurry but as soon as I try to get into the details, the image fades.

So how does this affect my photography? Well, it turns out, quite a lot. Reading photography books, most of them have phrases like “visualise how you would like the final print to appear”, “pre-visualise the final photograph”. Ok. Assume I can’t do that. What now? For most photographers this step appears to be a vital prerequisite to their craft.

My photography consists largely of walking around looking for things to photograph. Once I’ve found something, it’s often hard to know how to improve it without the ability to pre-visualise the effect of, say, changing lens. I’m attracted to strong geometric compositions (because they are simpler to work with) and a lot of my photographs are just happy accidents, many of which I discover during the review and editing process. But it also means that I have trouble knowing what will work when on location and results in a lot of fruitless expeditions with my camera.

So my question is, does anyone else have a similar experience? How does this effect your photography? Do you have any methods to help you to get a better “hit rate” that don’t rely on visualisation?

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You have an incredible opportunity to be unburdened of your mental images when photographing. Sometimes I might be so focused on what I want to achieve that I totally ignore an obvious angle or subject that would look much better.
While it might be a handicap, the photos you take are probably incredible just because of the different mental process you are required to do to take that photo. You might wanna turn that to your advantage.

Depending on what you shoot I think you might want to develop a different approach to photography. I’d start with spray and pray and then figure it out slowly.

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it makes no difference, the rules of composition are formulaic and you do have a memory it’s interpreted differently just like you dream in emotions. I am 48 yrs old and found out I had no pictorial memory when I was 19 and someone said something about their life flashing before their eyes.

In my 20’s I was a national level photojournalist, so no it makes bugger all difference, knowing your equipment and being able to react by reflex rather than going “hmm what aperture” is IMO much more relevant.

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Oh man, that sounds familiar!

As you might have guessed: I have this and you are the first person, that I now know of, that also has this phenomenon. And, like you, I came aware of this only a few years ago.

To be honest I’m not aware if this, in any way, influences my photography. It might, but I don’t know any better and … I wanted to write down “have learned to live with it”, but as I don’t know what I might or might not be missing there’s nothing to learn.

For example, the “pre-visualise the final photograph” is probably interpreted differently by my than the way it is meant; I look at a scene or (RAW) photograph and immediately know (not see!) what needs to be done, how it needs to be framed or what lens to use. This is based on a mix of experience and theoretical knowledge.

Would my photography life be any better if, for example, I could see with my minds eye the different shades of a colour before applying? I’m not sure about that. I think the process would be faster if I could envision scenarios before having to actually apply it, but I don’t think that the end-result would be any different.

I do think it puts you more in the moment, without any mental distractions, which is a good thing at times.

I am aware that this condition does influence me though; I love to read and ever since I found out that I have aphantasia I realize that, especially fantasy and sci-fi, books could be (so much) better if I could envision what the author describes.

I just read the other 2 replies and I agree with those wholeheartedly.

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Agree completely with this. Photography becomes a “mindful” activity where all you have is complete awareness of what you can see without distraction – I find going out with a camera to be a very meditative activity and the discovery of an unexpectedly attractive composition is reward in itself.

To some extent, familiarity with a photograph that I’ve studied and edited often acts as an alternative to visual memory – probably one of the main reasons I enjoy it, and a reason why I enjoy post processing as much, if not more, than capturing the image in the first place.

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Yes!

I often wonder if my long love for photography (and film for that matter) is at least partially a result of having aphantasia; I do have a need to be able to visually remember things I’ve seen. Knowing I’ve been there is one thing, but having an image to broaden that experience is very nice.

I so often miss scenes though. Saw one yesterday, one hell-of-a-beautiful blue evening sky. I know I saw it and remember it being very, very nice but I won’t be able to recall it visually.

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I thought everyone was like that. I too assumed mind’s eye was just a metaphor.

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It is a metaphor. You don’t see it as you do with your eyes.

Nevertheless I don’t doubt people are more or less able to “see” images in their heads. In my experience, as someone not suffering aphantasia, it works a bit like memory. Some things are better remembered than others it’s not all the same resolution. Same goes for mental images. There will be areas of low resolution that take more work to see. Same goes for intermediate scales. The image can in my experience have a frame or crop. Zooming and panning for lack of better words can be more or less smooth depending on what areas are considered.

Well, that sounds like me. But not what I got from googling.

First time I’ve heard of it, and don’t know whether I have it or not. I can certainly imagine or recall scenes in my mind, but my eyes still show black, and it is nothing like actually seeing with eyes open. I just thought of it as daydreaming. Don’t we all do that? The only thing I notice when I pay attention to these internal images is i stop seeing. Even if my eyes are open. It’s not that I lose vision, just that all my focus is directed inward to the mind. I’m living in my head. I know what I’ll be googling today…

One thing I’m wondering for those with aphantasia:

Today I was putting film onto a steel reel in a dark bag, and I wondered if this would be unreasonably difficult without the ability to visualize what’s going on inside there, or is it possible?

No, not at all.

I had a darkroom for years back when and thus had to regularly work in total darkness, did this without any problems at all. It might be that I rely om touch more then you do when transferring film from film-roll to cartridge and/or cartridge to drum.

@elstoc @Jade_NL Do you dream, like during the night, while you are asleep? Don’t you see images then?

Yes. As far as I recall, my dreams are full sensory experiences. My understanding is that most people who have difficulties consciously visualising have no such issues when dreaming.

@betazoid:

Yes, vividly!

I often have very intense and visual nightmares and I can assure you that you do not want to have that imagery in your head… I do not have a lack of imagination, but man, am I glad that I’m not able to visualize those when I’m awake!

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I can make mental images, that’s not a problem. But the advice to ‘pre-visualise the final photograph’ has always baffled me. My editing process is more like:

  • oh, the shadows are too dark, let’s fix that;
  • the background is too strong, let’s tone it down to bring out the subject more;
  • hmm… would this look better with a tighter crop?

So it’s not that I know what I want to achieve, and take steps in that direction; it’s ‘is there something I could improve’, one at a time. Of course, I’m mostly just trying to improve the mistakes I make as a results of my being a ‘dad with a camera’, rather than a photographer. I never compose as conscientiously as I read other people do; any non-trivial photography book (e.g. Freeman’s The Photographer’s Eye) is basically useless to me. I understand what they say; I can see it on their photos (or basically on anyone’s photos), but can’t apply them when I have a camera in my hands.

My wife, on the other hand, has never read anything on photography, not even a single article. She has ditched cameras and only uses an entry-level phone; yet, her compositions are great. She has a gift for drawing and painting. I assume that in order to draw and paint, you need to have ‘the final image’ in your head, and work towards achieving it. I never enjoyed drawing (it was compulsory at school and I did whatever I could to avoid it). I’m pretty sure these are related.

Can I visualize as defined by the OP? No, not in the sense that I can see a vivid image at the back of my eyelids. I would say I get impressions of things if that makes any sense. Sometimes the impression is so strong that I feel like I am there. Well, not to the extent that I could feel wet if I were caught by the image of rain. Happens to some people. Another way of describing the way I see is the expressions “I could see that” or “I could see my life flashing before my eyes”.

A Rocky fight or montage it is not, although that would be fun with the music and all.

The linkages in my brain are different. If you asked me the colour of something while my eyes are open, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I had so much trouble with geology: describing the colours, shapes and other features. It isn’t that I can’t see it. It is just that my imagination runs wild and these objects end up adapting different (possibly unrelated) associations. On my computer, I have a colour picker to help me discern colours. I zoom, pan and manipulate photos in various ways to get a sense of the features while editing.

In general, I make sense of the world by means of comparison, memory and metaphor. The best way to put it is the world is a video to me rather than a still. My mental imaging is more like HDR fusion and image processing, where multiple frames of information make up the whole.

And so, my photography is the process itself. I can’t predetermine what I produce. I may have a good idea and be able to follow constraints but I am at my best when I am unencumbered by expectation. Merely having the motivation and inspiration will bring me in the zone. Sounds vague doesn’t it? Not exactly, the photography is informed by experience, knowledge, technique and principles. It is just that if I hyper-focus on the tools I can easy forget where I am and end up not finishing or in a bad place.

I’m one who finds composition easy. It always baffles me when I see others take poor compositions. But it is a learned skill, and I learned it in high school art class. I was drawing and painting long before I owned a camera, so you could be right there. We had to study many different types of artwork, and determine what made the focal point of the image stand out, then write about it, and would get marked on our assessment. The main trick was to find leading lines in the image. Patterns played a part too. The rest was to do with contrast - lightness, hue and/or saturation. So now, once I find a subject to photograph, I basically stop seeing the subject and start seeing lines and patterns - background hills, fence lines, trees - all lines! If you do it enough it becomes instinctive, you just know a composition is good without having to analyse it. But of course composition is just one aspect of photography, and if you stuff it in camera it can often be fixed or improved with a crop. Emotion, light, mood, memories… these things are often of more importance.

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Yes, I know that. My wife doesn’t know that: she does it. :slight_smile: I can see it in her images, but when I point it out to her, she just shrugs her shoulders.
If I’m lucky, I can avoid lamp posts sticking out of people’s heads, and I don’t chop off the top of the church tower in my shots, or I may remember to crouch and take a shot from a more unusual perspective, and try to avoid centring everything, but that’s it. Then I play around in post. She does the post in Google Photos on her phone, on our way back from the trip. Me, I still have not processed all photos taken last May. :smiley:

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This is why I use my camera’s highlight weighted metering for ETTR, even though it really isn’t that. It’s why I use all-in-one zooms, so I don’t have to change lenses to get good framing, even though the image quality isn’t what a good prime would produce. In my shooting, I want to concentrate on the composition; even then, I’ll settle for less-than-optimal framing knowing I can crop in post.

I’ve long believed that, if you have a story to tell, your imaging relies less on composition to be compelling. If no story, then composition is king, over and above gnat’s-ass attention to exposure and IQ and all that.

Oh, when I close my eyes, I see black. Apparently, my ADD is aural, voices in my head, probably the major thing keeping me from Zen Enlightenment… :laughing:

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