Landscape Photographs Research Articles

Public perceptions of dangerous places: sources of variability in evaluating criminogenic environments

Using an experimental design within a large national survey, the current study examines the impact of the physical location, its surrounding area, and situational elements in photos of urban landscapes on public perceptions of dangerous places. Both multivariate regression and conjunctive analyses indicate that these ratings are strongly influenced by nature of the location (e.g., alleys, streets, parking garages, residential areas), the level of disorder in its surrounding area, and, especially, the presence of a firearm in these urban landscapes. The gender and race of individuals within the urban settings had no significant impact on these ratings. The results of this study are discussed in terms of their implications for future research on perceptions of dangerous places, the individual and situational cues underlying these perceptions, and understanding the contextual variability in public reactions to crime and incidents of police use of force.

Quantifying patterns in art and nature

Many different types of artworks mimic the properties of natural fractal patterns – in particular, statistical self-similarity at different scales. Here, we describe examples of abstract art created by us and well-known artists such as Ruth Asawa and Sam Francis that evoke the repetition and variability of biological forms. We review the ‘drip’ paintings of Jackson Pollock that display statistical self-similarity at varying scales, and discuss studies that measured the fractal dimension of Pollock’s drip paintings. The contemporary environmental artist Edward Burtynsky who captures aerial photographs of man-created and man-altered landscapes that resemble natural patterns is also discussed. We measure fractal dimension and a second shape parameter – fractional concavity – for borders in three of Burtynsky’s photographs of man-made landscapes and of biological tissues that resemble his compositions. This specifies the complexity of patterns in Burtynsky’s photographs of diverse man-impacted landscapes and underscores their similarity to fractal patterns found in nature. Graphical : Log Booms # 1. Photograph © Edward Burtynsky, courtesy Robert Koch Gallery, San Francisco / Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto.

Aesthetic Preference for Glossy Materials: An Attempted Replication and Extension.

The psychology of art and aesthetics has a long-standing interest in how low-level features, such as symmetry, curvature, and color, affect people’s aesthetic experience. Recent research in this tradition suggests that people find glossy, shiny objects and materials more attractive than flat, matte ones. The present experiment sought to replicate and extend research on the attractiveness of images printed on glossy and flat paper. To control for several possible confounding factors, glossiness was manipulated between-person and varied with methods that held constant factors like weight, color quality, and resolution. To extend past work, we explored art expertise and Openness to Experience as potential moderators. A sample of 100 adults viewed landscape photographs on either high-gloss photo paper or on identical paper in which a flat, matte spray finish had been applied. Ratings of attractiveness showed weak evidence for replication. People rated the glossy pictures as more attractive than the matte ones, but the effect size was small (d = −0.23 [−0.62, 0.16]) and not statistically significant. Attractiveness ratings were significantly moderated, however, by individual differences in the aesthetic appreciation facet of Openness to Experience. When aesthetic appreciation was high, people found the images attractive regardless of condition; when it was low, people strongly preferred the glossy images over the matte ones, thus showing the classic glossiness effect. We conclude with some methodological caveats for future research.

Exploring human-nature interactions in national parks with social media photographs and computer vision.

Understanding the activities and preferences of visitors is crucial for managing protected areas and planning conservation strategies. Conservation culturomics promotes the use of user-generated online content in conservation science. Geotagged social media content is a unique source of in situ information on human presence and activities in nature. Photographs posted on social media platforms are a promising source of information, but analyzing large volumes of photographs manually remains laborious. We examined the application of state-of-the-art computer-vision methods to studying human-nature interactions. We used semantic clustering, scene classification, and object detection to automatically analyze photographs taken in Finnish national parks by domestic and international visitors. Our results showed that human-nature interactions can be extracted from user-generated photographs with computer vision. The different methods complemented each other by revealing broad visual themes related to level of the data set, landscape photogeneity, and human activities. Geotagged photographs revealed distinct regional profiles for national parks (e.g., preferences in landscapes and activities), which are potentially useful in park management. Photographic content differed between domestic and international visitors, which indicates differences in activities and preferences. Information extracted automatically from photographs can help identify preferences among diverse visitor groups, which can be used to create profiles of national parks for conservation marketing and to support conservation strategies that rely on public acceptance. The application of computer-vision methods to automatic content analysis of photographs should be explored further in conservation culturomics, particularly in combination with rich metadata available on social media platforms.

Experiences of Ugliness in Nature and Urban environments

In folk psychology experiences of ugliness are associated with the negation of beauty and disorder, but empirical evidence is remarkably rare. Here, participants (called informed) took 102 photographs of ugly landscapes and urban scenes and reflected on their experiences. Later, participants naïve to the intentional ugliness in the photographs rated landscapes higher than informed participants. The ratings for urban scenes were similar in the two cohorts. Reflective notes revealed that emotional experiences with visual ugliness could overlap (e.g. decay), but ugliness was associated more frequently with fear and death in landscapes, and with sadness and disgust in urban scenes. The findings uncovered a complex layer of associations. Experiences triggered by perceived ugliness were contingent on a composite of socio-cultural, emotional, and evolutionary factors. Rather than being the endpoint on an aesthetic scale culminating with beauty, ugliness seems to be experienced as an independent aesthetic experience with its own processing streams.

Quantifying historical landscape change with repeat photography: an accuracy assessment of geospatial data obtained through monoplotting

ABSTRACT Traditional landscape photographs reaching back until the second half of the nineteenth century represent a valuable image source for the study of long-term landscape change. Due to the oblique perspective and the lack of geographical reference, landscape photographs are hardly used for quantitative research. In this study, oblique landscape photographs from the Norwegian landscape monitoring program are georeferenced using the WSL Monoplotting Tool with the aim of evaluating the accuracy of point and polygon features. In addition, the study shows how the resolution of the chosen digital terrain model and other factors affect accuracy. Points mapped on the landscape photograph had a mean displacement of 1.52 m from their location on a corresponding aerial photograph, while mapped areas deviated on average 5.6% in size. The resolution of the DTM, the placement of GCPs and the angle of incidence were identified as relevant factors to achieve accurate geospatial data. An example on forest expansion at the abandoned mountain farm Flysetra in Mid-Norway demonstrates how repeat photography facilitates the georectification process in the absence of reliable ground control points (GCPs) in very old photographs.

Psychophysical study of the moon illusion in paintings and landscape photos

The moon illusion is a visual deception when people perceive the angular diameter of the Moon/Sun near the horizon larger than that of the one higher in the sky. Some theories have been proposed to explain this illusion, but not any is generally accepted. Although several psychophysical experiments have been performed to study different aspects of the moon illusion, their results have sometimes contradicted each other. Artists frequently display(ed) the Moon/Sun in their paintings. If the Moon/Sun appears near the horizon, its painted disc is often exaggeratedly large. How great is the magnitude of moon illusion of painters? How different are the size enlargements of depicted lunar/solar discs? To answer these questions, we measured these magnitudes on 100 paintings collected from the period of 1534–2017. In psychophysical experiments, we also investigated the moon illusion of 10 test persons who had to estimate the size of the lunar/solar disc on 100 paintings and 100 landscape photographs from which the Moon/Sun was retouched. Compared to the lunar/solar disc calculated from reference distances estimated by test persons in paintings, painters overestimated the Moon's size on average Q = 2.1 ± 1.6 times, while the Sun was painted Q = 1.8 ± 1.2 times larger than the real one, where Q = r painted / r real is the ratio of the radii of painted ( r painted ) and real ( r real ) Moons/Suns. In landscape photos, test persons overestimated the Moon's size Q = 1.6 ± 0.4 times and the Sun was assumed Q = 1.7 ± 0.5 times larger than in reality, where Q = r test / r real is the ratio of the radius r test estimated by the test persons and the real radius r real of Moons/Suns. The majority of the magnitude of moon illusion Q = 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 2.1, 2.8, 2.9 measured by us are larger than the Q -values 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.8 obtained in previous psychophysical experiments due to methodological differences.

Recognition and Classification of Homogeneous Landscape With Visitor–Employed Photography and Cloud Image Annotation API—An Example of the Riverscape in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan

Effective classification of landscape photographs is a vital step in data processing and environment analysis. With the popularity of crowdsourcing geo-information, an increasing number of studies have used geotagged photographs to visualize how people perceive and interact with destinations and explore the aesthetic, cultural, and recreational value of the areas. In recent years, machine-learning algorithms for image recognition have dramatically improved the efficiency of the assignment of keywords and provide possibilities for the automatic classification of numerous photographs. However, the applicability of such methods for the practical landscape classification is still not clear, especially for the photographs presenting a homogeneous landscape that has similar characteristics. This study developed a semi-automatic classifier for homogeneous landscape photographs by using Google Cloud Vision API and multi-level hierarchical clustering. The classifier was applied to the classification of urban riverscape photographs, which is a typical example of homogeneous landscapes in Nihonbashi, Tokyo, Japan. The riverscapes can be classified into 9 characteristic groups by the classifier and the visual impression of these groups matches well with our intuitive feeling. A confusion matrix showed that the overall accuracy was 82.61%, indicating a strong agreement between the classifier and manual classification. Therefore, the classifier is practical for classifying homogeneous riverscape photographs. Such methodology also provides the possibility of public participation in the assessing process, which, in turn, contributes to urban tourism management.

Image Style Transfer Algorithm Based on Semantic Segmentation

Most of the existing image style transfer algorithms transfer the whole image style as a whole. Style feature is a set of correlation matrix based on style image, namely Gram matrix. Each matrix is a global description of the style image. This kind of methods can perform well in the insensitive semantic scenes (such as the style transfer between landscape photos), but in the sensitive semantic scenes (such as the style transfer between portrait photos), the problem of semantic mismatch will be highlighted, such as transferring the background texture of the style image to the foreground of the target image. Although the existing research takes the manually annotated semantic image as an input of the algorithm, and then guides the style transfer based on the semantic information, and finally achieves good results in the style transfer between portraits. But there are still two problems: first, semantic images need to be manually annotated, which costs human resources. In practical applications, large-scale image style transfer is often needed. Second, the details of the synthesized image are fuzzy, and the definition is not enough. We propose an image style transfer algorithm based on semantic segmentation to resolve semantic mismatching in image style transfer. Our algorithm extracts the semantic information of style image and content image automatically through a semantic segmentation network and uses the semantic information to guide the style transfer. Our algorithm builds a semantic segmentation network based on mask R-CNN, introduces semantic information, and then makes style transfer on the patch level, realizes the style transfer between similar objects (consistent semantic information). Experiments on Celeba and Wikiart show that our method could automatically extract the semantic information of style image and content image. Compared with the state-of-art approaches in this field, our method can effectively avoid semantic mismatch in the process of image style transfer. That is, it can maintain semantic consistency in the process of style transfer.

Need to Develop Diachronic Thinking Skills on Natural Landscapes: Analysis of the Results of University Students’ Comprehension of River Landscape Photographs

Need to Develop Diachronic Thinking Skills on Natural Landscapes: Analysis of the Results of University Students’ Comprehension of River Landscape Photographs

Education of Expression as a Cognitive Process

The study emphasizes the writing in pursuit of individual ideas, expressions, and cognitive process. A new model of writing education was created based on the cognitive process which involves responding to stimuli of objects with five senses - integrating sensory information with previous experiences to establish an objective and detailed recognition framework, - subjectively conceptualizing the perception, cause, and judgment. In particular, the study highlights the following concepts : ① To absorb an object with all five senses ② To make an emotional communion with an object in various contact methods ③ To draw out previous experiences and integrate with current experiences in order to exercise imagination and creativity ④ To connect and newly conceptualize the essence of object and the essence of ‘I’ and the nature of life by putting I into the object. Accordingly, the study involves the following stages : ① The Sensory stage : conducting ‘sensory reaction training’ → ‘activate five senses’ ② The Detection stage : writing a sensory response diary. ③ The Perception stage : splitting into a small group of three to four members to practice ‘finding sensory search terms and sensory descriptive terms’ → ‘sharing the story of experiences’ ④ The Cognition stage : ‘dialoguing with objects’ → ‘categorize the properties of objects’ → ‘imagine ‘I’ become an object and make a description in the first point of view’ → ‘a few moments of quite meditation’ ⑤ The Writing stage : using landscape photos containing various objects, writing practice incorporating the cognition process was conducted ⑥ The Final stage : stating one’s impression in writing after finish writing practice. The writing in pursuit of cognitive process is an effective way that can restore modern peoples brains, which are transforming into the reptile brains nowaday, but also modern peoples lives into a decent human life. After completing the writing in pursuit of cognitive process, students have stated following thoughts behind: ‘insight into the appearance and properties of objects’·‘fe ling of being one with objects through communion’·‘fe ling of positively changed mind and widen views’·‘had a chance of improving myself’·‘a lot of things to express and hold.’ In conclusion, the writing in pursuit of cognitive process reminds us once again what the equation of life = writing signifies, and the equation of life = writing is the truth that penetrates the nature of life and the nature of writing.

A Journey into Steinbeck's California, A Journey into Steinbeck's California and A Journey into Steinbeck's California

A Journey into Steinbeck's California, A Journey into Steinbeck's California and A Journey into Steinbeck's California

Bosque, fotografía y exposición: La construcción visual de la Amazonía a través de los clichés de Charles Kroehle y el álbum República peruana 1900

Between the years 1888 and 1891, German photographers Kroehle and Huebner began a journey into the Amazon rainforest that, with the passage of time, has become epic. During their trip, they took a series of photographs of the rainforest landscape and population, generating a collection of more than 200 images that became an essential reference for the visual construction of the Amazon. One of the main spaces in which these negative photographic images were presented and used by a “global” audience was the album Republica peruana 1900 , a document prepared to be displayed at the Universal Exhibition of Paris held in 1900. The purpose of the following text is to reflect on the photographic work of Charles Kroehle in our country, highlighting the importance of his images for the construction of national imaginaries and global scientific narratives about eastern Peru.

Assessment of landscape resource using the scenic beauty estimation method at compound ecological system.

Landscape resource assessment of compound ecological system is the basic condition for planning various management activities. After field survey and obtaining landscape photos of the Badaling region, we built the evaluation system of landscape resources. Then, we recruited people to evaluate the indicators of different scenic spots with evaluation system and overall evaluation by scenic beauty estimation method (SBE). The results showed that A01 and A05 gave a good impression to tourists from the point of view of scenic spots. Judging from the evaluation indicators, the entire region had a high score in geological landscape, while some of the scenic spots had low scores in humanity landscape. Overall evaluation has better practicability for the area with better landscape. The two evaluation methods are consistent in evaluating good landscape by SBE, through analyzing the main reasons for the differences in evaluation. The results and methodology can benefit landscape resource assessments as well as provide support on planning and management for compound ecological system.

Revert Henrique Klumb’s Developmental Narrative and the Modernization of Rio de Janeiro’s Landscapes

The Daguerreotype was brought to Brazil just a few months after it was demonstrated in Paris. The following months saw the medium take hold in Brazil and particularly Rio de Janeiro, where the initial demonstration of Daguerreotypy took place. Among those most interested in photography was the Imperial Family. Dom Pedro II and Dona Teresa Cristina were avid collectors of photography. Among the photographers they purchased images from was Revert Henrique Klumb. Klumb was appointed photographer to Their Imperial Majesties in 1861. He took photographs of members of the Imperial Family, acted as photography tutor to Princess Isabel and took many views of Rio. His photographs of both natural and urban landscapes within Rio presented a developmental narrative that spoke deliberately to Dom Pedro II’s modernization agenda. Though marked by certain absences, Klumb’s images show us what Rio was and what Rio was becoming during the middle decades of the nineteenth century.

Scenic beauty evaluation of plant landscape in Yunlong Lake wetland park of Xuzhou City, China

The plant landscape of Yunlong Lake wetland park in Xuzhou city was studied in this paper, 57 plant landscape photos were evaluated with SBE (scenic beauty evaluation) method, and the factors affecting the scenic beauty were analyzed. The results showed that (1) there was significant correlation between different evaluation groups on the scenic beauty of plant landscape; however, the convergence of different people in the evaluation of “beautiful” plant landscape was significantly higher than that of “ugly” plant landscape. (2) According to the comprehensive SBE mean values of 57 plant landscape photos, 31 were negative and 26 were positive. The order of SBE mean values of different types was plant landscape beside buildings or sketches (0.1882) > plant landscape on both sides of the roads (0.1667) > waterfront plant landscape (− 0.0085) > typical plant community (− 0.1729); the k-mean clustering grouped 57 photos of plant landscape into 5 categories: the proportion of “excellent, good, medium, average, and poor” was 5.26%, 24.56%, 29.82%, 26.32%, and 14.04%, respectively. (3) Linear regression analysis showed that the beauty of plant artistic conception was the main factor affecting the SBE of plant landscape. The regression equation was SBE = − 1.3 + 0.335 × (plant artistic conception). (4) The combination of plants and other landscape sketches was more favored by people; waterfront plant landscape and typical plant communities had a low degree of beauty in Yunlong Lake wetland park, which needed to be matched reasonably to create a better plant artistic conception.

Зримая история Тувы в фотодокументах Национального архива Республики Тыва

В статье проанализирован состав фотодокументов Национального архива (до 07.04.2020 г. — Государственного архива) Республики Тыва, произведена их классификация, дана подробная характеристика основных коллекций, в состав которых входят фотодокументы. В архиве хранятся 4466 негативов-оригиналов, 5115 позитивных отпечатков, из которых 1832 фотоотпечатка сформированы в 24 тематических альбома, а также 95 единиц учета (файлов), записанных на компакт-дисках.Прием фотодокументов в архиве осуществлялся с 1989 г. Основные источники пополнения: организации республики, граждане. Также архив собирает путем инициативного документирования. Классификация фотодокументов проведена по функциональному (целевому) назначению, по цвету изображения, по материальной основе носителя и пр. Также документы можно разделить на событийные фотографии (около 35%); портретные фотографии (около 39%); видовые фотографии, определенные предметы на местности и т. д. (около 25%). Наиболее востребованными являются фотодокументы периода Урянхайского края (1914–1921) и Тувинской Народной Республики (1921–1944), входящие в состав нескольких фондов.Более известны фотодокументы архивного фонда «Коллекция фотодокументов по истории Тувы» (1913–1940 гг.) краеведа В. П. Ермолаева. Но есть также много фотодокументов государственных деятелей, рядовых тружеников, а также людей, внесших существенный вклад в развитие республики. Все они являются важными источниками изучения истории Тувы.Текст статьи иллюстрирован рядом фотографий из фондов архива.

Alberto Rodríguez’s La isla mínima (2014): Visual Intertexts and Spain’s Ecosystem of Violence

Alberto Rodriguez’s 2014 film La isla minima/ Marshland is a compelling portrait of the Spanish Transition to democracy that also reflects on our present moment of crisis. Like many of their generation in the years following the 2008 financial crash, Rodriguez (b. 1971) and his collaborators on the film sought to peer behind the image of a clean and seamless Transition, intuiting that the roots of the present crisis could be found in the conflicts of that era. This article traces how the film builds a layered architecture through the use of three outside sources: Atin Aya’s photographs of underdevelopment in the Guadalquivir marshlands, Hector Garrido’s aerial photographs of natural landscapes in the same area, and the Despues de… documentaries, filmed by Cecilia and Jose Juan Bartolome during the turbulent years of 1979 and 1980. Woven together in the film, the three visual intertexts configure a layered archaeology of the recent past that not only superimposes different spatial and temporal frames but also intertwines social–political processes with emotional, natural and even spiritual dimensions.

Using photograph interpretation to understand perceptions of floods in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania

Floods are the most common natural disaster and cause economic loss and death. The amount of people exposed to flooding is increasing, especially in Sub-Saharan African cities. Within these cities, it is the poorest residents living in informal, high-density, and low-lying areas that are most at risk. Dar es Salaam experiences regular flooding, which is attributed to more intense and severe precipitation, rapid population growth, and inadequate infrastructure. This paper presents a case study of the city’s Kigogo Ward, an informal area situated between the Kibangu and Msimbazi Rivers. It presents a pilot study of households living in flood-prone areas to understand actual experiences. Not all experienced floods either inside or outside their homes. To understand why some households stated no flood experience despite living on or near rivers, a second phase of research incorporated photograph interpretation. Participants were shown a series of 10 photographs of flooded landscapes and asked whether the image was a flood. Results found a variety of perceptions of floods: from considering any amount of water a flood to considering waist-deep water normal rather than a flood. These results demonstrate a need to consider these differing perceptions of floods when creasing disaster management and resilience policies.

The role of discrete positive emotions in consumer response to place-of-origin

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to adopt a functional perspective to integrate and extend three streams of research, the first distinguishing between global affect and discrete emotional episodes, the second highlighting the capability of places to elicit emotions and the third demonstrating the differential impact of discrete emotions on consumer response. Doing so shows that four positive place emotions have a significant and variable influence on consumer purchase intentions for brands originating there.Design/methodology/approachA focus group pilot corroborates that places relate to contentment, enchantment, happiness and pride, which impact consumer response. Study 1 uses landscape photographs to show the four place emotions influence purchase intention for bottled water. Study 2 retests the impact of place emotions, using short vignettes and establishes the moderating role of product hedonic nature. Study 3 replicates emotion effects, corroborating their non-conscious nature and establishing their impact in the presence of place cognitions.FindingsTogether, the empirical studies provide evidence for effects of four discrete place emotions, especially with hedonic products and under conditions of cognitive load. Effects are robust when a person’s mood, buying volume, category knowledge, impulse buying tendencies and place cognitions are included as controls.Research limitations/implicationsThe study contributes to a better understanding of the emotional dimension of origin effects by adopting a novel, theory-based perspective on discrete positive place emotions impacting consumer response.Practical implicationsManagers invest substantially in places to elicit positive feelings, gravitating toward the view that all they need to do is create a global positive effect with consumers. The study informs this perspective by demonstrating how discrete emotions influence consumer response.Originality/valueThis study is among the first to examine discrete positive place emotions as possible drivers of consumers’ purchase intention.