Photos, like other forms of art, may trigger strong emotions. Some may move you to tears of delight, while others may make you laugh out loud. Some may make you scream out in sorrow, while others may make you rage. Many of the people you encounter, on the other hand, may not elicit an emotional response, and you will regard them with apathy. Great images may elicit both good and negative emotions, and those that do so are more powerful than those that do not. Here is an explainer of why emotions are so important in your photography.
What are emotions?
Love or terror are examples of powerful mental or instinctual feelings. That is most likely ineffective. It is a limiting description that excludes physiological signs such as a lump in the throat, butterflies in the stomach, or the pain of a shattered heart. Although there is no scientific agreement on a definition, we all intuitively understand what emotions are and what they do to us. They drive our acts and encourage our behaviour. Emotions are a conglomeration of mental states, biological and psychological manifestations, and bodily changes. If your images can do that, they are successful. But how do we get there?
To begin, we must acknowledge that the spectator is not the same as the photographer. The photo’s ability to evoke good or negative emotions is subjective, depending on the viewer’s belief system. I may look at images of my kid as a child or pictures of my friends and family who have since passed and feel different feelings than you would. Because you lack that intimate connection, you will have a smaller emotional response.
Alternatively, you may look at a picture of something you like and I might not react to it. Meanwhile, someone else may react negatively to the image. A photographer cannot control how their audience feels. They can only create visuals that elicit an emotional response and hope that others will feel the same way.
Second, like with other forms of art, a photograph might elicit two opposing feelings at the same time. The image may be offensive to our target audience. They can, however, appreciate the photo’s positive aspects, such as the composition, tone control, or even the risks the photographer took when capturing it.
To put it another way, a photo does not imply liking its substance. However, some viewers will be unable to separate their emotional reaction to the image’s contents from the image itself. It is very uncommon for a photographer to face backlash for uploading an image of an emotional topic online when all they were doing was documenting an event. Unfortunately, not everyone has the intelligence to distinguish between the subject matter and the photographer’s objective while exercising their creative abilities. Third, the higher the emotional response, the more intense the issue and the closer it is to one’s personal experience and chronology. As an example, consider the image below.
Most individuals will have no idea who the subject is and will have no emotional reaction to it. But this low-quality photograph is all that is left of Billy Grohl. What is his name? He’s a serial killer. Despite his horrible actions, our emotional reaction to this image is likely to be less than that of someone who is not a mass killer who is either living today or was a part of our recent past. Grohl is believed to have murdered about 100 people in the early 1900s. There will be exceptions, but even if they are aware of his misdeeds, many people will react emotionally differently to a photograph of, for example, Richard Nixon, because the latter is more current and is a true memory in many people’s minds.
As a result, most people would associate Nixon’s image with less emotion — good or negative – than a photo of Donald Trump. As previously demonstrated, a Trump photograph may elicit sentiments of delight for some but rage and disgust for others. However, because his presidency is still fresh in most people’s thoughts, it is likely to elicit a strong reaction.
Do we want our viewers to have a negative reaction to our photographs? Perhaps we should. Negative reactions to pictures are more powerful than good replies. So seeing a frowning subject is significantly more powerful than seeing a smiling person. This explains why so many photos are taken with the model appearing unhappy.
Is it more probable for a photograph to provoke an emotional response than a journalistic image? Surprisingly, happy sensations are suppressed in art as contrasted to non-art contexts. In other words, a photograph of a happy individual in a factual image will have a greater emotional impact than an art shot.
When negative emotions are conveyed, however, viewers’ moods alter little regardless of whether the picture is in art or non-art environment. In other words, whether the picture is art or news, unpleasant emotions such as disgust and rage are just as intense.
We should think about “Processing Fluency” while incorporating emotions into an image. That is how easily the mind processes information. Simply said, consumers prefer more fluid visuals – ones that are easier to understand. As a result, making emotions visible in a photograph increases the likelihood that the photograph will be valued more than one with greater complexity, where emotions are more difficult to discern.
That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t shoot photographs that are more difficult to comprehend. If you do, they will not appeal to as wide an audience.
The power to elicit emotions in the spectator is key to all aesthetic experiences. That is the entire purpose of art. The viewers’ grasp of the complexities of sentiments represented in an image, on the other hand, is determined by their emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is directly related to IQ. To put it clearly, someone who is intelligent is more likely to have a broad range and depth of emotional knowledge. As a result, they can understand the emotional intricacies of images better than someone with a lower intellect. Similarly, the stronger the photographer’s intelligence, the better their capacity to incorporate emotions into their photographs.
Of fact, there are more definitions of intelligence than there are of emotions, so what we mean by intelligence is subject to a more in-depth discussion than is feasible here. Furthermore, IQ testing has limits. Nonetheless, you may see this hypothesis in action in photographs presented on several news websites. Images on lowbrow sites, such as Mail Online, for example, appeal to a narrow spectrum of basic emotions, such as desire and rage. Because the readership is typically more intellectual as you approach upscale, the spectrum of emotions expressed in images becomes more diverse. The lesson here is to direct our visuals toward our intended audience.