The Camera and the Brain


Book Description

The Camera and the Brain follows two photons on their different paths: One flies through the lens of a camera onto a photographic sensor, and is transformed into a part of a photograph. The other one flies through the lens of a human eye, onto the retina, to be converted into a human percept. I discuss the perception of motion, scale and color, the constant scanning movements of our eyes called saccades, and the recognition of objects like faces. I also explain the fundamental difference between perceiving and photographing. The book is illustrated with my own photographs and illustrations by Anna Farrell.




Plato's Camera


Book Description

A noted philosopher draws on the empirical results and conceptual resources of cognitive neuroscience to address questions about the nature of knowledge. In Plato's Camera, eminent philosopher Paul Churchland offers a novel account of how the brain constructs a representation—or "takes a picture"—of the universe's timeless categorical and dynamical structure. This construction process, which begins at birth, yields the enduring background conceptual framework with which we will interpret our sensory experience for the rest of our lives. But, as even Plato knew, to make singular perceptual judgments requires that we possess an antecedent framework of abstract categories to which any perceived particular can be relevantly assimilated. How that background framework is assembled in the first place is the motivating mystery, and the primary target, of Churchland's book. Unexpectedly, this neurobiologically grounded account of human cognition also provides a systematic story of how such low-level epistemological activities are integrated within an enveloping framework of linguistic structures and regulatory mechanisms at the social level. As Churchland illustrates, this integration of cognitive mechanisms at several levels has launched the human race on an epistemological adventure denied to all other terrestrial creatures.




Right Brain Photography


Book Description

Right Brain Photography, an award-winning book, is for photographers who want to get the most out of their cameras, without spending hours in front of the computer, but yet want high quality professional results. It covers both the creative aesthetics and technical know-how sides of photography. You will learn about being an artist first, photographer second; see with your imagination, not your eyes; see something before you see it; how to make the common uncommon and the mundane insane. The book starts off with an emphasis on starting with the end in mind. The reader is immediately engaged with right brain exercises which the author introduces to get the mind stimulated. Eli has created three photography models, or paradigms, which he shares in his book, now in its fourth edition: "I S.E.E. SOMETHING," "ELI'S 5-POINT PHOTO ART MODEL," and "THE PHOTO IMAGE CREATION PROCESS." He also spends an entire chapter on the subject of composition, which he learned during his college art days, and which he feels is becoming a lost art among photographers. Throughout the book "challenge assignments" are introduced to encourage readers to apply what they learned, but in real life situations. They are intended to connect the dots. Most highly experienced professional photographers do not share the stage with other photographers, especially in a book about their photography. Eli does. He showcases eight of his students' works to show what other photographers create when they apply his principles, concepts, paradigms, and techniques. Right Brain Photography has over 130 eye-catching images that serve to illustrate lessons taught.




Blow Up


Book Description

In Blow-Up, a collection of essays that tackle aesthetics from the angle of neuroscience, Warren Neidich proposes a different and wholly original paradigm for thinking through cultural history and the philosophy of the human subject. Across the theoretical landscape that Neidich describes, even familiar monuments from the history of art, architecture, philosophy and aesthetics appear strange and disorienting, because the starting point of the primary and secondary repertoires (the nervous system and the pathways of connection built up through interaction between the brain and the outside world) is so totally unexpected. Crucial to Neidich's narrative is the idea that, in modernity, the technologies that have evolved in the sphere of visual communication have come to operate on the subject with particular vehemence, not only in the realm of meaning but in their determining influence on the primary habits and dispositions of experience. Photography, cinema, television, the internet--as the forces of spectacle gain ever-wider currency in a rapidly globalizing world, those cultural forms that emerge as dominant in the competition for structuring the pathways of consciousness will annex and colonize more and more of the subject's interior life, worldwide. But Neidich suggests that the subject of culture has the ability to remap itself, rewire itself, and assume forms so creative and protean that it will always outrun the forces that seek to limit its plasticity--even trauma and amputation cannot irreversibly damage the neural body.




The Photographer's Mind


Book Description

Explains the elements that top photographers look for to create great photographs.




Basic Vision


Book Description

If you've ever been tricked by an optical illusion, you'll have some idea about just how clever the relationship between your eyes and your brain is. This book leads one through the intricacies of the subject and demystifying how we see.




The Practice of Contemplative Photography


Book Description

This book teaches photographers how to connect fully with the visual richness present in their ordinary, daily experiences. According To The authors, photography is not purely a mechanical process. You need to know how to look, As well as where to point the camera, and when to press the button. Then as you develop your ability to see, your appreciation and inspiration from the world around you become enhanced. Filled with practical exercises and techniques inspired by mindfulness meditation, this book teaches photographers how to "see what's in front of them". It offers a system of training and exercises that draw upon Buddhist concepts, As well as on insights of great photographic masters such as Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston, and Henri Cartier-Bresson. There is a series of visual exercises and assignments for working with texture, light, and colour, As well as for developing mindfulness, As a way of bringing the principles of contemplative photography into ordinary experience.




Eye and Brain


Book Description




In Camera: How to Get Perfect Pictures Straight Out of the Camera


Book Description

With amazing low-light capabilities, incredible definition, intelligent autofocus and a host of other features, digital cameras have now become so powerful that they have left their users behind. Most photographers can take competent shots in a range of conditions, or fix imperfect exposures in Photoshop or Lightroom, but very few have the skill to push their cameras to the limit and capture the perfect shot, under all conditions, with no post-processing required. In Camera is the perfect way to take your photography to that level; to master your camera, understand light, exposure and composition, and make amazing photographs, whatever your camera, without cheating after the event. One hundred of Gordon's beautiful photos are given with his own expert commentary; full settings and camera details are included, and a host of tips and tricks let photographers of any level learn something from every example. The shots are taken with a wide range of cameras, and the emphasis is on getting results by improving your own skills, not wasting money on expensive equipment.




The Brain Eater's Bible


Book Description

The Brain Eater's Bible by J.D. Ghoul with Pat Kilbane is a field manual and manifesto—in the vein of Max Brooks's bestselling The Zombie Survival Guide—for the reanimated dead. "What is wrong with me?!" That's what you're thinking, isn't it? You woke up in a drainage ditch covered with skin ulcerations and nasty flesh wounds. Your body is numb and your memory is foggy. Someone tried to give you medical attention, but you repaid their kindness by savagely killing them and eating their brains. You are a zombie my friend, just like me. Though most zombies are slow and stupid, the fact that you are reading this tells me that you are different. Some of us are. Welcome to the PACE virus apocalypse.