srt101fan

Don't know if we've talked about this in a dedicated topic before. I sometimes wonder why I'm attracted to a particular photo, what makes me want to linger or want to come back to it. A few reasons:

-- It realistically depicts a subject I like
-- It evokes pleasant memories (childhood/relationships/travel...)
-- It expresses beauty via form, color, shape...
-- It depicts interesting, thought-provoking forms, colors, shapes
-- It teaches me something (historical sites/events...)
-- It projects a sense of mystery I'm drawn into
-- It projects a sense of serenity and peace
-- It makes me think about the human family

Do you have any additions to the list? Any comments on what makes an "interesting" photo?

PetiePhotoBug Loc: Albuquerque, NM--USA

A photo that draws me makes me feel intense emotions or touches my heart in some way.

TallTree

For me, I look for composition, patterns, lines, colors, anything that hits me squarely between the eyes!

Linda From Maine Loc: Yakima, Washington

1. A relatively common scene or subject elevated to "wowsa" status by virtue of the light.

2. A subject or scene that I have photo'd or would like to photo, that is very new-to-me in terms of composition or pov. I will admire at these at length trying to decide if I would have seen/discovered the same.

Rongnongno Loc: FL

Taste and boredom.

Strodav Loc: Houston, Tx

We have been asking those questions since the first cave paintings and have some insights, but a definitive answer is impossible because we don't understand how people think / reason and because of the differences between us including both genetic and learned responses. Even your state of mind can alter what you are seeing at the moment. If you are bored and indifferent or distracted you may see something different than if you are engaged.

Your list contain items that invoke mostly positive feelings. One can develop a compelling list that invokes very negative, if not terrorizing, feelings. For me, I show my wife a full screen shot and if she says "OH WOW", I know I've got a keeper. She and I think and respond very differently, but her perception is probably closer to the norm than my perception.

Best treatment I have seen of the subject is covered in "Mastering Composition" by Richard Garvey-Williams, especially Chapter 1 on Visual Perception. Two of the interesting things I took out of the chapter is 1) a viewer's eyes will move around an image in an attempt to make sense of it - find things that are familiar and associate them together based on their life experiences; 2) Your brain is made up of multiple processors and various processors might be simultaneously looking for different things in an image. The processor that finds what it's looking for first influences the other processors. Ever experience not being able to remember something, your conscious mind moves on to something else, but all of a sudden the answer pops into your mind. That was another processor that kept working on the problem accessing your memory until it found the answer. Ever drive to work and when you arrive you don't really know how you got there?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The artist captures what the other photographers didn't notice.

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

For myself it is also the relationship between the subject and the viewer (pleasant memories?).

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The math of a beautiful image is easy: it has twice the megapixels of your current sensor.

User ID

If all a photo is doing is putting a box around something that I would casually see in much the same way, just on my own, without the use of photography, then I have no interest in that photo. Even if I may have an innate interest in the content or the subject, I will have no interest in that photo. I just won’t see it.

Scruples Loc: Brooklyn, New York

When I started learning photography in high school, my teacher said all that we see is a photograph. With little imagination we can create a story. This photograph is a silent acknowledgement of our world around us!

traderjohn Loc: New York City

For me I don't have the same sense of "enjoyment" from a photograph as I have from paintings.

Julian Loc: Sarasota, FL

All of the above.

User ID

“Transformative”, includes “revealing”. Thaz my contribution to the list.

Nothing drastic required, but don’t show me nothing more than the superficial visual evidence that “this was”, “this is”, or “this happened”.

Scene in a photo may be of tremendous beauty or horrific tragedy. The world is full of both. Superficial evidence that the earth still spins is not worth the pixels. Such photos are not “worth a thousand words”. They can be quite adequately replaced by verrrry few words, despite the blood or the bokeh.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

What I want when someone sees one of my images is that it invokes an emotional response from the viewer.