What Types Of Memorable Photos Do People Remember The Most?
This is part 3 of an 8 part series about memorable photos.
Of all the millions of images we see in our lifetimes, there are just a select few that end up being stored in our brains. We saw in the last post the images people remember most are historical or family photos. But there is something in common with almost all of those historical and family photos. They include fellow human beings in them. According to extensive research on photo memorability done in 2011 by M.I.T., the types of photos people remember most are photos with people. The least memorable photos are landscape photos.
Memorable Attributes
In their research, they analyzed four different attributes that are well known in the world of photography on how they correlate with the memorability of a photo:
Popularity — The photos they used for their research were selected from Flickr. They compared the popularity of a photo, how many views it has, with how well it performed in their memorable tests. When looking at the comparison, the photos that were popular on Flickr also rated high in memorability. Popular photos are popular for a reason, they resonate with people to the point they remember the photo and share it with others.
Saliency — This is defined as the quality of being noticeable or prominent. They analyzed how memorable are images that focused on a single object like a bowling ball or a car. These types of images actually rated very high in memorability. It appears that when an image draws people’s attention to a single object, they tend to remember that photo much more than photos with many objects and/or without a specific object to focus on.
Emotions — They also analyzed images of people expressing different types of emotions to see which emotions were most memorable in a photo. The most memorable emotion was amusement, but interestingly, negative emotions like disgust, fear, and anger were the most memorable after that. Photos with feelings of awe and contentment were less memorable. And images of people looking at peace were rated completely unmemorable. Reminds of all those “peaceful” stock photos that all seem to blend into each other creating a blob of meaninglessness.
Aesthetics — How pretty an image is, had no effect at all on how memorable or unmemorable the photos were.
Memorable vs Forgettable Photos
The photos above are a series of memorable and forgettable photos from the study. The forgettable images are in the top row. The memorable ones are in the bottom row.
Counter-Intuitive Photos
They discovered that counter-intuitive photos were also rated as memorable photos. These are the funny, awkward, or weird photos that we encounter that end up challenging the way we view something.
People In Historical Photos
Interestingly, going back to the previous post when we discussed how the photos people remember most are historical and family photos. We can see how those famous historical photos not only represent a crucial time in history, they are also not photos of landscapes and peaceful people. They capture tragic or extremely triumphant human moments. They typically focus on a single person or well-known objects such as planet earth. I’m sure if you think about your family photos that you can remember off the top of your head, most of them will be of a single person or small group of people experiencing some kind of emotion like amusement, joy, fear, or pride.
I can’t just create a historical photo without traveling all over the world constantly hoping to be at the right time and place. But I can take photos of my family and friends that they will remember. People love to see people and the things we make. To help your photography gain more attention and be more memorable, try photographing people, interesting objects, and counter-intuitive images.
What do you consider to be the most memorable photo you have ever taken?
Memorable Photos Series
Understanding what makes a photo memorable has many dimensions to it. There are technological, artistic, psychological, cultural, and physiological dimensions to photos. I’m going to make this into an 8 part series including this one because of how much there is learn and write about on this topic.
I will explore and research what has already been learned about memorable photos. I will also discuss an additional theory I have on what makes photos more memorable than others.
The articles I write will answer these seven questions:
- Memorable Photos, What Are They And How Do We Make Them? This is the series introduction where we set the stage for learning more about memorable photos.
- What is a memorable photo? We will view and discuss some of the photos that are considered extremely memorable.
- What types of memorable photos do people remember the most? This post will explore the research that has revealed the types of photos that people remember most.
- What are the composition techniques used in memorable photos? I shed light on the most popular composition techniques photographers leverage in memorable photos.
- What connects people to a photograph? For a person to remember a photo, they have to connect to it.
- How does the tone of the image affect memorability? Apart from the subject matter and composition, tonality also affects how we remember photos.
- What is visual teleportation in photography? This is a theory I have on what else makes a photo memorable.
- What techniques do photographers use to make memorable photos? We will learn the various techniques that well-known photographers employ that we can also use.
Originally published at https://matthewtrader.com on December 2, 2020.
