What Makes a Photograph Memorable? 60
Hugh Pickens writes "Researchers have developed a computer algorithm that can rank images based on memorability. They found that in general, images with people in them are the most memorable, followed by images of human-scale space — such as the produce aisle of a grocery store — and close-ups of objects. Least memorable are natural landscapes. Researchers built a collection of about 10,000 images of all kinds for the study — interior-design photos, nature scenes, streetscapes and others, and human subjects who participated through Amazon's Mechanical Turk program were told to indicate, by pressing a key on their keyboard, when an image appeared that they had already seen. The researchers then used machine-learning techniques to create a computational model that analyzed the images and their memorability as rated by humans by analyzing various statistics — such as color, or the distribution of edges — and correlated them with the image's memorability. 'There has been a lot of work in trying to understand what makes an image interesting, or appealing, or what makes people like a particular image,' says Alexei Efros at Carnegie Mellon University. 'What [the MIT researchers] did was basically approach the problem from a very scientific point of view and say that one thing we can measure is memorability.' Researchers believe the algorithm may be useful (PDF) to graphic designers, photo editors, or anyone trying to decide which of their vacation photos to post on Facebook."
Re:One thing (Score:2, Interesting)
...Are not that memorable to me, unless they're out of the ordinary in some way. Usually a bad way. I will never get the image of weird, concave-looking nipples out of my brain, no matter how much bleach I drink.
I do wonder if there's a whole slew of fun we could discover with this, though. I suck at remembering people's faces; and I suck at accurately remembering images involving people.
At the same time, I rule at 'other' things. For example, there's a picture of my desk from my apartment in college sitting on my NAS. Haven't looked at it in at least six years. I can tell you there's a can of Mountain Dew, logo clearly facing the camera, sitting approximately three inches to the forward/right quadrant of a grey, two-button wheel mouse. A circular glass ashtray, six inches in diameter, sits behind the keyboard, overflowing with the butts of Djarum Black. And my caps lock key is on. ...Maybe this has to do with 'color, or the distribution of edges'. But seriously, I'm much better at remembering completely boring and random scenery than I am people. Especially women. I tend to remember women in pictures as idealized versus the actual photography. Wait, maybe my memory is like Photoshop, rather than faulty. :P
strange study (Score:4, Interesting)
What a strange study. From the summary, the researchers sampled a group of individuals by presenting them with random photographs and rating not their _memorability_ but rather recall in asking them to press a key "when an image appeared that they had already seen". This is much different than what I believe makes a photograph memorable--which typically involves some sort of an emotional response to the subject in photograph. For instance, nature pictures taken on a journey to me personally would be very memorable--even though the study suggests otherwise.
If you're in marketing and want people to "recall" your product, yeah sure, this study is relevant. But, it's sort of misleading labeling it memorable as it suggests an emotional response and this study does not address that.
By the way, the definition of "memorable" is the quality of being worth remembering--very different from recall.
Area of central focus (Score:4, Interesting)
They should consult with more photographers. One thing is obvious: the most-memorable pictures have a central point of focus...something to grab your interest. The least memorable images in the TFA have nothing to grab your attention. That applies to a mixture of subject matter as well as a single subject, such as landscapes.
The TFA gave short shrift to aesthetics, too--where in the photo the central point of focus most favorably may be placed, such as the Rule of Thirds and Golden Sections. These go back to Da Vinci...not new ideas.
Advertisements (Score:3, Interesting)
Other criticism of the study aside, a group of people who might be interested in how well pictures are remembered after short glances are advertisers and marketers.
Re:strange study (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I agree with you.
Random anecdote: I used to go on week-long 50+ mile hikes in the NW's Cascade Mountain range with a group of friends. We used to tell newcomers - the scenery is breathtaking, but without people in the picture, it's not really all that interesting for other people, and won't be as memorable for you in the long run. In other words, don't just take scenery snapshots. Sure enough, the most interesting photo collections tended to be a good mix of scenery and everyday living conditions on the trail, but they almost ALL had human subjects in it.
When you're up in the mountains, you stare at the scenery, but what's really memorable wasn't the scenery, it was being there and experiencing it with friends. I suppose the study was trying to hint at this in some way. As nice as beautiful landscape pics are, they are much less memorable to me than a photograph of me and my friends up on the top of a mountain. In general, people are more interesting to other people than just about anything else.