ABSTRACT
Psychologists take various approaches in exploring personality that are very useful for understanding image-makers, their work, and how people react to pictures. This chapter focuses on cognitive abilities, which are the mental abilities for perceiving, reasoning, and judging, as well as on personality traits, such as introversion and extraversion. It considers how photographers have different personality types or styles, which are clusters of cognitive abilities and personality traits. A knowledge of personality types will enrich the work of photographers who enjoy doing portraits or any type of people photography. The chapter examines how the interaction of the conscious and unconscious forces within the mind—its psychodynamics—will influence the way people invent and experiences images. Psychodynamic theory adds the idea that personality style consists of traits that interact with each other on conscious and unconscious levels, sometimes as polarities, sometimes in seeming contradictory and paradoxical ways. A successful and creative image-maker strives to be an educated one, formally or informally.
