Photography and brain health – ten ways to keep those neurons in tip-top shape

Speeding things up improves life in countless ways — think of jet planes, bullet trains, and HOV lanes — but when it comes to cognitive decline, slowing things down is the name of the game. Let’s explore the subject of photography and brain health, and discover how to keep our minds as sharp as our focus.

It is an unwelcome but undeniable fact that working memory, executive functioning, and ability to process information decline with age for most of us; we are dealt a finite number of neurons at birth and with the passage of time they steadily pop their clogs, never to be replaced. But, there are concrete actions we can take to slow or minimise the decline.

Photography and brain health

Biomedical research is helping to identify them. Researchers are beginning to understand how behavioural choices impact brain health and have already demonstrated the beneficial link between exercise and cognitive ability; even the underlying biological processes responsible for these changes are becoming clearer. We may possess fewer neurons than when we were spry nineteen-year-olds, but the connections between them can be rewired and the entire neural network optimized, given the right stimuli.

Those of us in the Macfilos community have a powerful weapon in our armoury when it comes to fighting cognitive decline: our obsession with passion for photography.

I firmly believe photography engages our brains in ways that keep those neurons fighting fit. In this article, I outline ten ways photography is good for our brains.

Photography and brain health: benefit number one — walking to a location that affords a great view.

The payoff from forsaking your couch and hiking up a steep gradient to the top of a hill or along a winding path to a secluded beach is twofold: the photogenic vista that awaits you and the brain-health benefits of your exertion. It has been proven that walking significantly improves thinking ability, and what better companion for your stroll than a camera slung over your shoulder?

The best views are not always accessible by car; while some photographers might baulk at the journey on foot, it is good for our grey matter and good for our art. In fact, consider loading your camera bag with your heaviest gear — a Leica SL2 and collection of full-frame L-mount lenses would be ideal — giving you the added benefit of some weight training while you are at it.

Photography and brain health: benefit number two — using composition as a workout for our inferotemporal neurons

The world through your viewfinder comprises an assemblage of objects differing in shape and colour, some nearby, some distant. Regions in our brain devoted to visuospatial perception integrate and interpret this gemish of information, so we understand what we are seeing. Specialised neurons in the inferotemporal region of our visual cortex are summoned into action as we weigh how best to compose a photograph from the scene on our screen.

Should we zoom in on those shrubs in the mixed herbaceous border? Or should we highlight the alignment of shadows cast by that fence? Making these creative choices is the fun and challenge of photography, and for that spongy computer up top, like a session at the fitness centre.

Photography and brain health: benefit number three — harnessing our parieto-occipital neurons to capture the decisive moment

This second pathway within the visual cortex handles spatial location and motion of objects in the field of view. It comes in handy when driving a car or whacking a tennis ball. It is also busy when tracking the movement of a person, anticipating that moment when they are perfectly aligned with a reference point in the scene: a doorway or a gap between stepping stones in a pond.

This is the decisive moment, a term coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson, where a photographer has anticipated an important moment within the constant flow of life and captured it in a split second. I can almost feel my neurons go into overdrive and my noggin overheating as I track the subject’s trajectory, calculating when to press that shutter release. Give it a whirl; your brain will thank you.

Photography and brain health: benefit number four — employing hand-eye coordination to focus a camera manually

Just as there was a world of mental arithmetic, slide rules, and log tables before the advent of electronic calculators, a world of manually-focused cameras existed before the advent of autofocus. ‘Wait!’ I hear you protest, ‘manual focusing is still a thing, especially for Leica cameras’. It is indeed, and what an opportunity that affords. Accurately focusing a camera exercises neurons in the visual cortex and those governing fine motor control. So, let’s let them loose on some manual focusing challenges.

I confess that I have never used a rangefinder camera. Nevertheless, despite this egregious gap in my Leica journey, I do regularly focus my cameras manually. The physiological mechanics I employ are common to handling cameras in manual-focus mode: rotation of the focus ring on the lens barrel while viewing a scene through the viewfinder, judging by eye or focus-assist when the image is correctly focused.

This hand-eye-brain coordination is especially important with very fast lenses where the depth of field is razor-thin. Those neurons were really firing when a friend took this shot with his Fujifilm X-E4 and f/1.0 lens.

Photography and brain health: benefit number five — learning to use post-processing applications

Now that we have captured that cool image as a RAW file, it’s time to process, fine-tune, and export it as a JPEG, ready for submission to Macfilos. Here’s where a post-processing application such as Lightroom enters the scene and opens yet another avenue for improving brain health.

Before I splashed out on my Leica Q2, I had never heard of Lightroom; I had to figure out photo processing from scratch. Here was an opportunity to learn a new skill: a superb way to improve the brain’s neurocircuitry. In fact, it might be the best way to tune up that tangle of neurons housed in your head.

Even though some of us are getting long in the tooth, our brains are still plastic, meaning the spindly dendrites connecting our neurons to one another can be rearranged, forming new synapses that help us tackle new tasks. Practising our new skill also activates specialised brain cells called oligodendrocytes that strengthen the myelin sheaths insulating those dendrites, allowing electrical signals to flash along them more rapidly.

I am no Lightroom expert but am now reasonably proficient. I have even begun to use Photoshop to deal with blemishes or place borders on my abstract photos. As well as thousands of new photos, I reckon my Q2 purchase and Lightroom subscription have added millions of additional synapses to my collection; what a great deal!

Photography and brain health: benefit number six — bringing order to that sprawling collection of photos.

If you are like me, your photographs live in many places: the cloud, accessible through applications such as Lightroom; the photo app on my computer; and as RAW files on a solid-state hard drive. How should I organize and harmonize these various collections? What logical archival framework would allow swift retrieval of images when needed for a new project? It could be based on chronology, location, topic, camera, lens, project or some other variable. So many choices! So many decisions! So good for the brain!

Solving multi-parametric puzzles like this, perhaps through folder-, album- or tag-based approaches, is good for keeping our cognitive capabilities sharp. And when the task is complete, we enjoy the extra benefit of a dopamine boost for our memory, motivation and concentration.

Photography and brain health: benefit number seven — reading books, articles, and blogs on photography

Here is another great way of taking your brain to the gym and working those mental muscles. Reading helps keep the mind active, and photography-related material exposes us to images that can lift our spirits and inspire us. There are so many aspects of photography to read about: technical details of cameras and lenses, reviews of the latest gear, reviews of vintage gear, biographies of photographers, travel stories, and opinion pieces.

Even though photography is primarily concerned with the visual arts, it is often complemented by a narrative describing the setting, the significance, and the creator of the photograph. Macfilos is a wonderful source of scholarly and informative articles about photography, and each article we consume adds heft to those reading muscles between our ears.

Photography and brain health: benefit number eight — writing about photography

As valuable as reading is for brain health, writing provides even more nourishment for our most energy-hungry organ. It demands the integration of multiple cognitive functions, including language, memory, and logic circuits, as well as hand-eye coordination and abstract thought. And that’s not even including the unique feature of writing about photography: tastefully illustrating articles with images likely created by the author.

Writing forces us to organize our thoughts; as we rack our brains for just the right words with which to convey them, we develop new neural circuitry along the way.

If you have yet to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard to express your thoughts on photography, give it a go. I know just the person to whom you can send your article. Having recently encouraged a friend to write for Macfilos, I can testify how much he enjoyed the experience, we readers enjoyed the story, and his brain enjoyed the challenge.

Photography and brain health: benefit number nine — belonging to a community of photographers

Communities can be defined in many ways: through shared location, common background, or similar interests. One thing is clear, though: belonging to a community is a deeply-felt need and a powerful contributor to mental health. Although the world’s photographers could be considered a community linked by a common interest, a true sense of community is felt more emphatically by smaller groups who know and frequently communicate with each other in their distinctive patois.

Those interactions can be in person, through photography walks and social events, or virtually, through webinars and blog sites; they offer novice photographers an opportunity to learn, and experienced photographers an opportunity to share.

The Pacific Photography Society, based in San Diego, is an example of the former community, regularly organizing events hosted by experienced photographers. Macfilos is a great example of the virtual community, where, despite being distributed around the globe, we can schmooze and kvetch to our hearts’ content with people we have never met and perhaps will never meet.

In both cases, it falls to someone to take the initiative and organize these forums. They deserve credit for their leadership and contribution to improving our brains’ health.

Photography and brain health: benefit number ten — experiencing a regular dose of awe

By virtue of their relentless pursuit of breathtaking images, photographers are at increased risk of experiencing feelings of awe, an emotion proven to lift spirits, increase the width of grins, and boost psychological health. The photographers’ expanded view of the world, seen through lenses offering a field of view distinct from that of normal eyesight, increases the likelihood of them being awestruck – by a wide-angle shot of a cloudscape or a telephoto shot of an osprey plucking a hapless fish from the ocean.

Not only are photographers exposed to awesome experiences through their art, but they can also dole out awe to viewers of their photographs. After all, what greater compliment could a photographer receive than to have their work described as awe-inspiring?

Photographing natural wonders, spectacular buildings, or breathtaking sunsets is a surefire way to feel awe-inspired. I recently attended a virtual photography conference featuring a marine-wildlife photographer based in Monterey Bay, California. His work was truly awe-inspiring. Witnessing nature in all its beauty through his spectacular images lifted my spirits. That’s the power of awe.

Brains Trust

There are many more resources available to support healthy aging. Here’s one from The National Council on Aging. It is not specifically related to photography, but it is nevertheless a very helpful guide to keeping those neaurons in tip-top shape.

Have I convinced you of the link between photography and brain health? Is there someone you could encourage to take up photography and enjoy all these brain health benefits? Are you tempted to write about your experience as a photographer? Can you think of other ways that photography benefits our mental health? Please share your thoughts in the comments. I look forward to hearing from you.

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