Photographic interpretation is “the act of examining photographic images for the purpose of identifying objects and judging their significance” (Colwell, 1997). This mainly refers to its usage in military aerial reconnaissance using photographs taken from reconnaissance aircraft.
Principles of image interpretation have been developed empirically for more than 150 years. The most basic of these principles are the elements of image interpretation. They are: location, size, shape, shadow, tone/color, texture, pattern, height/depth and site/situation/association. These are routinely used when interpreting an aerial photo or analyzing a photo-like image. A well-trained image interpreter uses many of these elements during his or her analysis without really thinking about them. However, a beginner may not only have to force himself or herself to consciously evaluate an unknown object with respect to these elements, but also analyze its significance in relation to the other objects or phenomena in the photo or image.
Famous quotes containing the words aerial, photographic, satellite and/or image:
“Every year lays more earth upon us, which weighs us down from aerial regions, till we go under the earth at last.”
—E.T.A.W. (Ernst Theodor Amadeus Wilhelm)
“Sickness sensitizes man for observation, like a photographic plate.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
“Books are the best things, well used; abused, among the worst. What is the right use? What is the one end, which all means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book, than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)