EMOTION OF COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY VS. BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

EMOTION OF COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY VS. BLACK AND WHITE PHOTOGRAPHY

Christopher Moore

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World History of Photography

Emotion has been within portrait photography since its early beginnings in 1839 when the daguerreotype was patented by Louis Daguerre. Since 1839, there has been a feeling of emotion that is bestowed onto the viewers of daguerreotype through modern day street portrait photography. Although you can have emotions without feelings, it is also true that we can’t have feelings without emotions. While photography began with black and white images, in the 19th century color images were created and now lead the industry today. Color currently occupies a huge portion of various forms of media. However, before the twenty-first century, black-and-white format dominated the technology of photography.

Today, black-and-white design has become a rare object in the field of photography. This does not mean that the technology of black-and-white photography cannot be replicated in today's media production world. However, according to recent research, color photography is powerful and attractive. However, limited research has focused on examining the effect of powerfulness and attractiveness of color photography vs. black-and-white photography on the elicitation of emotion among viewers of portrait photography. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to determine the research finding, which indicates that color photography has high levels of attraction and power compared to black-and-white portraiture, is a conclusive piece of evidence that explains the relationship between emotion in color photography vs. black-and-white photography. However, before carrying out the research study, it was hypothesized that whereas color images are the industry standard for majority of practices, black and white images evoke more emotions than colored images due to the contrast of colors and welcoming ability to focus. Therefore, Construal-Level Theory is used in this paper to explain the elicitation of emotions in color photography vs. black-and-white photography. On the other hand, the theory explains the arousal levels (low and high) in both cases of color photography and black-and-white photography.

Emotions

According to scientific research, emotions are innate psychological states which occur subconsciously as an individual tends to react to external as well as internal events. In this case, an external event could be viewing photography, either color photography or black-and-white photography. Subjective experiences of an individual's emotions result in different feelings. Simply put, feelings are because of emotions. Thus, feelings depend on emotions for manifestation. Individuals will only develop feelings when they are already experiencing emotions, like sadness or joy, otherwise there can never be any occurrence of feelings. Research has shown that emotions can be categorized into seven basic psychological states, such as sadness, fear, anger, joy, surprise, contempt, and disgust. Emotions are not limited to the list provided above, it is possible for one to experience as many primary and secondary emotions as possible. According to Justin, there are ‘basic’ emotions (e.g., happiness, sadness) to more ‘complex’ emotions (e.g., nostalgia, pride), and even ‘mixed’ emotions. ‘Aesthetic’ emotions (e.g., awe, admiration, wonder) also occur, but may be rarer.” However, some research studies have shown that emotions can also be studied in terms of valence. According to Schreuder et al., “valence” refers to the intrinsic attractiveness— positive valence—or averseness—negative valence—of a stimulus.” This means that when exploring emotion in color photography vs. black-and-white photography, it is possible to look through the lens of valence (negative or positive) in order to understand how emotionality is involved. However, this research focuses on emotions by addressing emotional responses simply as responses to stimuli such as objects like photographs.

Elicitation of Emotion in Photographs

Just like listening to the sound of music, viewing black-and-white photography or color photography can arouse intense emotions. However, photography is just an abstract piece of art. As such, photography is a sensory input emanating from our surroundings and has the power to shape how we feel as well as behavior. When people view several types of photographs, they are likely to develop emotions based on luminosity of the images. Color photography vs. black-and-white photography refers to the representation of stimuli in a low-level construal vs a high-level construal. Each case is seen as an object or event with signals that influence human perceptions through visual sense. As explained above, emotions can occur due to an individual’s interaction with external events, such as observing a photograph in real time. Ever since the introduction of daguerreotype photography, emotion has been an embodiment of many portraits to date. It goes without saying that emotion has often occupied an important part of black and white photography as well as color photography. Photography is an embodiment of technology which can be studied and practiced at the same time. Therefore, studying photography in relation to emotions is one of the human efforts to make this field of art an important area of knowledge in which human emotions can be understood in terms of the way people engage with visual information rather than written information.

Human interactions with photography have led to the many research studies which tend to focus the emotional responses elicited by black- and-white photography versus color photography. Whether we are talking about primary or secondary emotions, the main idea regarding the elicitation of emotions can rely on both subjective and objective observations. Subjective observations are likely to occur based on the influence of personal experience, opinions, and past events. The way an individual judges the emotions elicited by photography can result from assumptions, opinions, beliefs, judgement, and ideas. On the other hand, objective observations are determined by facts as well as details which can be interpreted further without relying on opinion. However, the distinction between objective observations and subjective observations involves variations and uniformity. Objective observations are defined as such due to their uniformity. However, subjective observations vary from individual to another, thus, due to varying opinions, beliefs, and judgement. Daguerreotype photography contains fine grained images which can be reached as monochromes due to the black-and-white effect. “The images the daguerreotype process did yield were so fine grained, detailed, and brilliant that, for the general public, the faults were easily forgiven or resigned to the realm of problems that technology would inevitably solve.” The assertion by the author indicates the power of black-and-white photography in the nineteenth century. However, whether the same reactions towards the daguerreotype photography are still maintained to date is a question which can be addressed based on specific theories, such as CLT. However, according to Naomi, “The surpassing clarity of detail, which in fact still is the daguerreotype's most appealing feature, led Gros to concentrate on interior views and landscapes whose special distinction lies in their exquisite attention to details.” This indicates that daguerreotype photography is likely to evoke significant amounts of emotional signals based on the viewers. However, it is important to note that emotions are likely to originate from numerous stimuli that occur at the same time to bring out the manifestation of a recognizable set of emotions, whether secondary and primary emotions.

The effect of color on photographs has been addressed by many research studies. These research studies indicate that people are more likely to be attracted to photographs with color. Therefore, color photography is related to attention. However, previous research does not indicate whether attraction and attention in color photography translates to elicitation of emotions. As such the aim of this research is to explore whether attraction and attention in photography is equally the same as arousal levels (low and high) of emotions in color photography vs black-and-white photography. However, for this question to be addressed, it is important to understand whether emotions can stand alone irrespective of the presence or absence of attention or attraction. According to the research carried out by Detenber and Samuel, “Color also influences how people feel. In general, research on print advertising tells us that color is more attractive than black and white.” However, attraction does not directly translate to emotional effect because “In another study, color did aid recognition of newspaper photographs, but it had no significant effect on recall.” Therefore, it follows that recall is not a factor of attraction or attention. Recall is a factor of emotional response towards an object or event. When the level of recall is high, the emotional response is likely to remain high as well. This simply means that high emotional arousal is likely to enhance recall for people who view a specific format of photograph. Detenber and Samuel, in their research, indicate that “black and white billboards were significantly better recalled by motorists than color ads.” This claim confirms that emotional responses towards objects like photographs are not likely to be influenced by color photography. Instead, they are determined by black-and-white photography.

It is possible to argue that recall and emotions go hand in hand when trying to explore emotions in color photography vs. black-and-white photography. According to Kensinger, “Although positive arousing and negative arousing experiences are more likely to be remembered than neutral ones, when it comes to remembering the details of those emotional experiences, valence is a critical factor.” This claim, which is supported by evidence, shows that black-and-white photography is likely to lead to higher levels of emotional responses than color photography, especially whether valence is put into consideration. Buchanan argues that

“Emotional events are often remembered with greater accuracy and vividness (though these two characteristics do not always go together) than events lacking an emotional component.” From this claim, it can be argued that viewers of color photographs and black-and-white photographs are likely to experience various levels of emotions depending on the ability to remember either of the formats.

The Construal-Level Theory (CLT)

Elicitation of emotions in photography can also be viewed through the lens of Construal-Level Theory (CLT). This theory explains the psychological distance that can exist between events and objects which have no relationship with direct experience. For instance, an event which occurred in the past has psychological distance in relation to the one that is presently occurring. Also, an event that is occurring now has psychological distance in connection with an event that will occur in the future. Apart from psychological distance, research has also demonstrated the existence of physical distance and social distance. When social distance can evoke you vs. me, or imagined vs. real emotion or feelings, while physical distance invokes the picture of here vs. there. However, direct experience of events facilitates detailed visualization of events. This means that psychologically proximal events and experiences enable the construction of representations through objective observations. Nonetheless, in absence of direct perceptions individuals are likely to rely on subjective observations to shape representations. Distant events, for instance, the creation of daguerreotype images, tend to lack detailed specifics which force an observer to employ high-level construal when constructing emotional representations found in the old photography like daguerreotype images.

When constructing emotional representations in daguerreotype photography, many people are likely to build a strong connection between black-and-white images with distant past because of relying on high-level construal's. On the other hand, color photography is likely to be associated with the near past because of using low-level construal's. Color in color photography relates with recent technological advancement. Therefore, an individual viewing color imagery is likely to connect it to an item with a temporally proximal attribute. Color photography is tied to low-level construal due to psychological proximal. However, when categorizing black-and-white photography vs. color photography, many people tend to focus on form and detail. Form involves a feature in the black-and-white photography while detail signifies color photography categorization. Research has also shown that color photography vs black-and-white photography is likely to elicit nostalgia when an individual interacts with either of the two images. While this observation is based on scientific research, the observation may differ from one individual to another due to the occurrence of low-level construal and high-level construal. However, it is not possible to generalize the elicitation of emotions when interacting with color photography vs. black-and-white photography. Lee et al. indicate that:

“There are also reasons to question the assertion that low-level construal is more emotional than high-level construal. CLT proposes that emotionality and construal level are conceptually distinct. Rather than suggesting that one level of construal is more emotional than the other, CLT instead suggests that people experience several types of emotions at each level of construal. Some emotions represent acute responses to specific, unique features of the here-and-now, whereas other emotions result from a broader understanding.”

The line between color photography and black-and-white photography in terms of the emotions which they evoke lies on primary emotions and self-conscious emotions. However, Lee et al. explain that “low-level construal is associated with the experience of primary emotions such as happiness, and high-level construal is associated with the experience of self-conscious emotions such as pride.” This is also a different lens through which emotion in color photography vs. black-and-white photography can be viewed.

Conclusion

Color photography and black-and-white photography has been used in different situations to date. However, black-and-white photography is older than color photography. Today, people prefer color images over black-and-white formats since the former is more attractive than the latter. Also, color images are considered to have high chances of attention of viewers more than the other design. However, this research focused on exploring emotions in color photography vs. black-and-white photography. The findings show that color photography is more attractive and powerful due to its ability to catch the attention of viewers. However, it was found that black-and-white format is not neither attractive nor powerful in terms of catching the attention of viewers. However, one thing was clear. Black-and-white photography can be recalled and remembered more than the other formats. In the same line of thought, the research shows an elevated level of emotional responses are associated with high recall levels. Therefore, it was concluded that black-and-white photography has prominent levels of emotional response among viewers because it is likely to be remembered more than other designs. Therefore, seeking for photography that is attractive, it is plausible to go for color photography. However, when looking for designs which can elicit elevated levels of emotions in viewers, it is advisable to choose black-and-white photography.

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