Over-Index with People in Photography
Today, photography matters. The importance of amazing photography is being discussed everywhere in regards to visual success in articles, websites, blogs, and social media. Everyone want’s to create credible, successful, and even viral content. It’s been studied that the right use of photography plays a big role in getting your work shared and engaged with in some way. This goes for the use of stock photography and custom commissioned imagery.
In this blog post, I wonder why some photos or profiles gain far more attention than others? What’s happening when you love 2 photos, but don’t understand why one is liked far more than the other?
Recently, I heard a story of a guy that ran 2 Instagram accounts. He was a little frustrated because one account had a lot more followers but was seeing less actual engagement from them, compared to the other account.
The difference? People. Human element.
The account with more followers but less engagement was sharing more landscape type imagery with an absence of people. Apparently the engaging account was sharing more imagery with the element of people in some way. Unfortunately, I don’t have the actual accounts to provide a direct example, but it’s totally believable. I’ve seen this with my own stock photography that I share freely and it’s encouraged me to incorporate at least one person in the scene with my own architectural photography.
Are people in your photographs really that big of a deal? It depends.
As beautiful as landscape and architectural photography can be, these images alone don’t always garner the best responses from viewers. A great photo to compare and illustrate the point comes from photographing the same scene with and without people.
Over-Index with People on the Bus
Let’s use Unsplash photos by Matthew Wiebe for a pretty good comparison of over-indexing with people in a similar scene.
And then…
While an empty scene, like the bus, can definitely hit on emotions we feel and tell part of a story, we long for connection. The empty bus would definitely be relevant to some topics and be the better choice; however, we desire community and the serendipitous chance of connecting with someone else. This is something deep within our DNA.
The photo with people is over-indexed, but don’t take my word for it. The overall statistics speak for them self:
People in my own photography
Another reason I feel confident that you’ll over-index with people in your photography (or the photography you share) is because of my own most popular photos on Unsplash. While some of my favorite photos are of architecture, the images that have risen to the top are photos with people.
In my case, my architectural images on Unsplash have been available for a longer period of time; however, only 2 have been able to surface in the top 10 of my +140 images. They’ve had longer to build up views and downloads yet it’s my images with people that over-index.
People in Stock Photography
After originally writing this article, I discovered an article by @tchebotarev on how he made $1,602.50 with 500px Prime in just a few weeks. Evgeny, stated an obvious truth that might not be so obvious to everyone:
The obvious truth is that photos with people sell. In fact, most purchases are photos of people doing things. — @tchebotarev
There is a demand for photos with people doing things. This information, straight from the founder of 500px, helps photographers understand that including people in your images will increase your chances of earning income from your stock photography.
Try it out for yourself
I don’t want you to get the idea that photos without people are not engaging or beautiful or never sell. I’m not calling for an all or nothing scenario here.
My aim has been to show you a couple of pretty clear examples that promote an exploration of using and shooting photos with a human element in them. Try it out for yourself and hopefully you’ll see increasing engagement and interest with your photography, articles, or social media content.
For instance, if you’re like the dude with 2 accounts wondering why your website/account/posts are not getting the attention you think they deserve, try out some relevant imagery including people. I’m sure you can find something for free on Unsplash to do some testing.
As I mentioned, this is something that I am experimenting with related to my architectural photography. It’s time for me to explore this with my pineapple images this summer.
Let me know what you think and how it goes, if you experiment!
Originally published at scottwebb.me on April 18, 2016.
