Tag: depth perception

Aerial Perspective

The eighth lecture was primarily focused on perception and how we interpret the things around us using visual cues. There are many aspects of perceptual organization, but I wanted to explain one in more detail.  Aerial perspective is defined as objects at distances that are blurred, less detailed, and lighter in color than when they are nearby.  The effect is due to the atmosphere which causes far away objects to appear “hazy” and unclear to the human eye.  Aerial perspective is a monocular cue that is used for depth perception.  Most people probably utilize aerial perspective every day when driving or walking around without even knowing it.


Aerial perspective is most easily noticed by observing natural landforms like mountains.  During the winter months, I go on many ski trips to various places such as Stowe, Vermont, with either friends or family and the landscape there is one of the best for observing aerial perspective.  As seen in the pictures above, there are many hills, trees, and objects littered throughout the landscape that have distinct shapes and colors. The colors (brown, green) and the shapes of the ground and the trees are easily visible in the foreground of the picture.  Aerial perspective is more visible in these pictures the farther out you look. The mountain ranges that are much farther out in the pictures are covered by the “haze” of the atmosphere and make colors and shapes far less distinguishable. The once browns and greens of the closer objects are non-recognizable and appear as a uniform bluish mountain range in the distance.

 

Aerial perspective provides us with monocular cues that significantly help with depth perception.  Without these cues, many things such as hitting the slopes and other activities would be hard to gauge and interpret.

Definition of Aerial Perspective found at: https://www.alleydog.com/glossary/definition.php?term=Aerial+Perspective

 

Depth Perception: Monocular Cues

In Lecture 8, we talked about perceptual illusions, which help us understand how our perception is organized. Part of these illusions include depth perception, which enable us to judge distances. There are two types of depth perceptions: binocular cues (using both eyes) and monocular cues (using one eye). Focusing on monocular cues, this only requires one eye to obtain depth information. 

Examples of monocular cue perspectives include interposition, which allows one object to block our view of another, showing that the object that is blocking is closer. Aerial perspective, which shows that with more distant objects become fainter. An example of this could be to look at a picture of mountains with more “hazier” mountains in the background. Another example of a monocular cue is linear perspective, which involves parallel lines appear to converge with distance. The more the lines converge, the greater their perceived distance. With texture gradient, we see fewer details (texture) the farther an object is from us. Finally, motion parallax shows us that close objects appear to move more quickly than objects that are farther away. An example of this would be looking out a car window and seeing that the mountains in the back are moving at a slower pace than trees or other objects in front.

A personal experience I had when working with depth perception was when I was in art class in the 6th grade and was told to sketch a long street, with houses and stores on both sides. In order to create the illusion of depth, I needed to draw the street convergence in the distance. To do this, I had to use a linear perspective in which I created parallel lines that represented the street, that got closer or narrower as they appear farther away from the viewer. By doing this, it looked like my street was covering great distance as you looked up from the drawing.