Introduction
This essay presents 15 photographs of the refrigerator interior with items naturally arranged as they would appear during normal circumstances. I used android camera phone without flash so not to distort the view. The succeeding pictures will be present minor changes because I added some items of different shapes and sizes on various locations inside the refrigerator. The pictures were taken in the kitchen under normal electric lighting conditions present in the house. No other artificial light source was used in the pictures aside from the white fluorescent bulb on the ceiling.
Thesis Statement
Normal electric lighting poses a risk of misjudging object perception due to the lack of supplementary lighting in an enclosed opaque area filled with clutter and with compact spatial arrangements. This photo sequence reveals the importance of having additional light fixtures to equipment made of opaque material and the addition of spatial intervals for visual comfort.
Object Recognition
Light plays an important role to help the eyes see better in order to enhance object perception in a way the brain is able to recognize the visual input sent by the eyes and interpret these messages in order to determine the type of object as well as its physical properties (e.g. texture, outline, color, skin markings, etc.). In all of the pictures, the lack of improvement in lighting conditions prevented me from viewing some of the objects clearly especially the smaller ones. I had encountered trouble in assessing the object’s physical properties due to the lack of light inside the refrigerator which made it impossible to determine the shapes of the items in the farthest corner inside the refrigerator; while the bigger items do not present an issue in terms of perception. Additionally, the absence of light inside the refrigerator interior made the colors looked mundane and blurred. When viewed from the camera, some of them will appear abstract and unrecognizable.
Spatial Arrangements
Another factor that contributed to the difficulty of accurate object perception is the cluttered and compact arrangements of items inside the refrigerator. For instance, in the first set of pictures, there were no bottles and boxes that obstruct the passage of light into the interior; however, in the later sets, pictures already had issues presented in them. The tight space inside the cluttered refrigerator makes it hard to gauge the length of some of the items; this can be true on the case of the rectangular green box on the left. The center of the refrigerator divider was parted to give room for the Pepsi boxes. On the other image, the first Pepsi box had been placed on the divider and then the second Pepsi box was placed on top of the previous box. Going back to the scenario of single Pepsi box, even in the absence of extra lighting, one can still clearly see the top view of the box and therefore, the eyes sees the object and then passes the information to the brain and the latter determines the object as a rectangular green box. However, with the addition of extra blockage, the correct judging of an object’s appearance in addition to the lack of sufficient light inside the area prevents the eyes from sending accurate information to the brain and therefore makes it impossible to determine whether the box’s shape was either rectangular or square. The cluttered space due to the addition of another item contributed to the foreshortening of the object’s outline; again based on the green box on the left, some relevant parts of the image had been cut from the line of vision as a result of adding more obstacle and in order to add more depth to the emphasize the length of the object, the outlines of the green box were shortened. The same thing can be said on the two Pepsi boxes placed inside the refrigerator. The lack of space diminished the effective portrayal of the length but the absence of some of the parts served as visual illusions to establish depth.
Conclusions
The normal and unaltered electric lighting condition in the home affected the appropriate object perception; the cluttered and the mismanagement of spatial arrangement contributed to this issue since with the addition of more materials inside the refrigerator, the law of spatial arrangement has been broken. The compact arrangement of items lessened the presentation of their physical qualities. In other words, the absence of lighting and spatial arrangement together with the inclusion of more items to the already cluttered environment reduces the visual comfort by altering the viewers’ perception regarding their length; and with this, the addition of more objects becomes the catalyst that hinders the best viewing experience by lessening what they eyes can see and therefore, what the eyes cannot see, the brain makes inaccurate assumptions regarding the linear component and physical traits of all the items inside. For better viewing, it is highly recommended to arrange the refrigerator according to their sizes and allot a bit of space to allow the passage of light inside. It is also recommended to have another lighting source in addition to the one present in the house to avoid miscalculations in perceiving objects based from their physical properties or their distances. (See next page for the transformation photos).
