How People See Photos Differently
I was in the studio yesterday and today (and probably tomorrow too) recording some new classes for Kelby Training. So it’s been hard to carve away time to post. But an interesting topic came up the other night while I was looking through 500px. I came across the photo here (the one you see above) by
Tobias Richter. I didn’t just want to take the photo from the page, so you’ll have to actually click on the link to see it larger on 500px. But click on it now. Head over to 500px and take a look. Don’t read on because I don’t want to spoil it for you. Just form an opinion about the photo and whether you like it or not. Then read on to the rest of the post…
Okay, you’re back and hopefully you have an opinion on the photo I mentioned above. To me, this is an incredibly stunning photo. The greens, blues, warm colors, sun, rocks… everything about it. I love it! I want to be there and I wish I had this photo in my portfolio. So I’m sitting next to my wife and I say “Wow, that’s amazing!” and lean over to show it to her (I was on my iPad). The reaction I got from her was the last thing I expected to hear. She said (and I’m not kidding here), “Ewwww, that’s creepy!”.
What!!?? Creepy? That’s the last word I thought I’d hear. Of course I asked what was it about the photo she thought was creepy, and she said she saw this screaming painful face in the middle bottom area of the photo. I don’t even want to circle it or draw attention to it because I’d love to know if anyone else saw this.
The point is that it’s really interesting to see how different people see different photos. Of course I knew this before this situation ever happened, but still. How could I think a photo was absolutely stunning, and my wife be immediately creeped out over it? It’s not like I said “I love it”, and she said it was “pretty good” or, “kinda ok” or something like that. She immediately saw something that took me a few minutes to see even after she pointed it out. Heck, it even took me a minute to find it again tonight when I was writing this post.
So the question(s) to you are: What was your first reaction to the photo? Do you see the face that she was talking about? Did you see it before I pointed it out?
Have a good one!
Matt Kloskowski
