Cappella del Crocefisso, Basilica di San Miniato al Monte, Florence

Photograph Copyright ©2013 Loo Yen Yeo. All Rights Reserved.

Concept: Gestalt perception (closure); Circles and ellipses (implication); Gestalt perception (proximity); Gestalt perception (similarity); Gestalt perception (common fate)

Description: Inside the 12th century Florentine church of San Miniato al Monte, semi-circular Romanesque arches abound at its South-Eastern end. Grouped by proximity and similarity, the Principle of Common Fate is at play. The spread of light over the heads of Saints John Gualbert and Minias, depicted in the two large golden panels of the chapel, complete an implied circle begun by the chapel's vault under Gestalt's Principle of Closure.

Since common fate is in effect, one completed circle causes all the other circles to be completed.

Title: San Giovanni Gualberto's Redemption

A Sunflower in Classe, Emilia Romagna

Photograph Copyright ©2012 Loo Yen Yeo. All Rights Reserved.

Concept: Circles and ellipses (implication); Single point (centre); Frame shape (non-bias patterns)

Description: Fields of sunflowers line the way from Classe back to Ravenna. This is a classic photograph where a normally static central placement of a single point, the flower's centre, lets the sunflower's pattern tell the story. Sunflowers owe their dynamic pattern to the Fibonacci sequence, which encourage the eye to trace clockwise or counter-clockwise spirals simultaneously.

Multiple concentric circles are strongly implied, and the central point of focus is accentuated by the radiation of bright yellow petals whose tapered bases vector mildly inwards.

Title: Mesmerising

03.09 Circles and ellipses

In terms of opportunities for visual composition in the natural world, circles occur less frequently than triangles. This is because the points which would imply a circle have much less freedom of position. Without the support of a curving edge or line, the composer would require:

• at least five points, because three points would be perceived as a triangle and four as a square;
• the points, and track of any curve, to be equally distant from a central point in space; and
• they would have to close enough to each other to provide perceptual closure.

Circles have an enclosing effect, tending to focus the eye inward towards their centre; therefore they are a powerful means of directing the viewer's attention into what they contain. There can also be a slight feeling movement along a circle's periphery which comes from its association with rotation.

Naturally-occurring circles include bubbles, the sun, the moon, and organisms featuring radial growth.

Ellipses, often interpreted as circles viewed at an angle, possess the same properties i.e. feeling of enclosure, and direction of attention inward to a focal point. Unlike a circle, ellipses have only two axes of symmetry and they have greater dynamism because the speed of visual flow changes - accelerating or decelerating - along its periphery.