SummitPost.org

http://cvcl.mit.edu/papers/IsolaXiaoTor ... PR2011.pdf

Very interesting paper describing how to measure and predict a photo's memorability. Not surprisingly, photos of people are very memorable. Landscapes are least memorable, mountains especially. Though I bet this audience would skew that statistic a bit. Semantics matter to memorability. To most people a portrait is not just a portrait, it's "an attractive male, about twenty-five, with dark hair and blue eyes", but they probably don't distinguish beyond "a photo of a mountain", whereas to some of us it's "a class 4 ridge, looks like granite, over a highly crevassed glacier in an alpine/arctic valley, probably northern Rockies or Alaska".

I hold an opposite view. I cherish the landscape shots more than the "Homo Sapiens" shots.

You're probably painting with a broader brush, but I think "popularity" AND "POTD STATUS" have a lot to do with SOME people posting shots of themselves and others.

Then again, a few folks post strictly landscape AND mountain shots, (some with the same peaks over and over), and they "WIN" hands down.

The human mind is .... a terrible thing to take a picture of.

This audience would *definitely* skew the perspective a bit...we are always grumbling for more pictures from the northeast aspect of the peak, or what does it look like in mid-November, or...

There is definitely a place for people in our mountain shots, but showing the person participating in the drama of the scene, not standing in front of it and smiling or something like that.

Comedy and Drama - yes, what images of people are based upon, but you can always have too much of a good thing.

Mountains are easier to remember than people. If I read a name of a mountain or see a photo of a mountain, I can remember that I climbed it and usually I can remember which time period. Often though, I can't remember at all the names of the people whom I climbed it with (which is one reason why I have started keeping better logs/diaries). In fact I already forgot the name of one of the two persons I hiked the Halls Creek Narrows with last weekend.

I think so too. I remember faces (whether or not I've seen someone ever before, and usually in what context I last saw them) but I have to hear a name about a hundred times before it'll "stick" to a person. If I'm reading a book or a play, I'm constantly flipping back to find out whether Jim is the brother, the lover, or the butler. War and Peace was hell, since everybody could go by any one of first name, last name, patronym, title, or nickname.

My ability to recognize faces doesn't work as well for photographs and movies. If a movie has two major characters who look the least bit alike, I'm lost. Black-and-whites where everybody dresses formally are the worst, especially if anybody changes costume or hairstyle.

Voices don't help. After at least a decade of listening to almost every Car Talk, I have absolutely no idea which voice belongs to Tom and which to Ray, and I don't remember which one owned the Fiat or had multiple divorces.

But I've seen photos friends or relatives have taken where I instantly said, "oh yeah, you're on mt so-and-so, facing east. I was there ten years ago."
(Edit: I'm usually wrong about the "ten years ago"; if I say that it was probably 15 or 20 years ago. My sense of elapsed time (on scales longer than a few days) is absolutely wretched, too.)

Tom is the one on the left ..



I believe I'll ALWAYS remember Lurch ...

To my observation black and white landscape shots tend to get passed over more than color.