Viral Photo Projects: The Average Photographer Goes Viral
By: Katherine Schwartz
We’ve all seen them.
The picture of a cat dressed up in a funny costume. A hilarious photo of a little kid covered in chocolate. The heartfelt picture of a soldier coming home from war. These images have all gone viral on the internet, and they were all taken by your average photographer.
“So what is it that can make the average photographer go viral” you ask? Is it excellent photography? Is it a great camera with a kick ass lens? Is it because cats are funny and do weird things. Maybe. But maybe there is some logic behind what makes the average person’s photos become national infatuation.
The Psychology behind the Viewer
According to Jonah Berger, an assistant professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business, there are a number of key aspects that can make ideas, images and products go viral via the internet. The results are pretty interesting and I’ll give you a quick breakdown of what his study concluded.
- Positive content is king (and will go viral more often than negative)
- Practical and interesting (unique) content is what gets shared the most
- People like viewing images that are highly emotional
None of these results should be shocking. We know that people like positive content and photos (who enjoys negativity if we’re being honest here), and we know that interesting things will obviously grab people’s attention. But what kinds of emotions capture someone’s attention and keep them reigned in enough to make images go viral?
“The first problem of communication is getting people’s attention.”
— Chip Heath, Made to Stick
“Second That Emotion”
The kind of emotion that people are naturally drawn towards is “High- Arousal” emotion. What is this “High-Arousal” emotion you ask?
It can be positive.
It can be negative.
But the one main thing that High-Arousal emotion does is target the specific emotional needs of a certain consumer, making that emotion really stick and resonate with a person. According to Jonah Burger, there are certain emotions that seem to trigger “high-arousal” emotion in people. Here is what he found.
- Awe: something that is in a way remarkable
- Anger: when you piss people off, they feel the need to inject themselves
- Anxiety: people hate the thought of losing what they have.
- Fear: one of the biggest motivation factors- as a result people often take action.
- Joy: the feeling of happiness. Everyone likes being happy.
- Lust: the feeling of extreme want
- Surprise: something that goes against expectations, showing a new way of doing something.
Viral Emotion’s In Action
Now that you know the types of “high-arousal” emotion that people are naturally drawn to, let’s look at some actual photographers that have made their photo projects go viral and identify the key emotions that made each project do so.
Human’s of New York
Human’s of New York was started by Brandon Stanton in the summer of 2010. The goal was to make “an exhaustive catalogue of New York City’s inhabitants” by taking 10,000 pictures of everyday New Yorkers. As the project progressed, Brandon started taking quotes from the people that he photographed. At this point, the project morphed into the mega-photo project and blog that we know today: Human’s of New York.
Key Emotions:
- Fear
- Joy
- Anxiety
“You know, I think what Humans of New York does is highlights maybe the other tones of our lives that people aren’t so willing to express, or tragedy that they might not have told anybody else. Then, there’s somebody in my audience that’s reading that and says, “You know what, I’m going through that exact same thing, and I was afraid to talk about it also.”
Those are the stories I feel proudest about.”
— Brandon Stanton
The Dogist
The Dogist is a documentary photo series that follows beautiful and interesting dogs in over 30 cities worldwide. Photographer, Elias Freedman, started the project in 2013 and since then has accumulated over 1.3 million Instagram followers and is due to release a second book this year. His style is similar to that of Human’s of New York, but his pictures and the overall emotion behind his pictures is quite different. His key question when taking pictures is “Why do we consider dogs to be man’s best friend?” His pictures embody those characteristics.
Key Emotions:
- Awe
- Joy
“Dogs are capable of incredible things, it’s true. However, most owners utilize dogs as pets only. It’s my challenge as a documentarian to find and connect with the right owners who are doing something special with their dogs”
— Elias Freedman
World’s Best Father
When Dave Engledow originally started his quirky photo project in 2012, he had no idea the project would get so big. The project was meant as a parody and documentary of sorts for his daughter, Alice Bee. Engledow wanted a way to document Alice Bee’s childhood in a way that she could enjoy later on. Engledow wanted to avoid the “boring Facebook parent sterotype” and thus the “World’s Best Father” project was born.
Key Emotions:
- Awe
- Joy
- Surprise
- Anxiety
“Early on, I used the series to play out some of the things I was really worried about as a new father.
Making photographs of some of those things helped me deal with those fears I had as a new dad. As I posted them online more and more, people started giving feedback, telling us how much they identified with the images and it snowballed from there.”
— Dave Engledow
Fashion By Mayhem
Mayhem’s story (who is four) started on Instagram. Her mom has an account called @2sisters_angie that gained extreme popularity after her small daughter, whom she calls “Mayhem”, started making dresses and outfits completely out of paper. Mayhem, with mom Angie’s help has continued to make paper dresses and continued to grow in popularity. The dresses have spanned from Grammy replica’s, to runway shows, to shark costume’s inspired from a trip to the aquarium. Angie has a blog with the photos on them, and the Instagram account has 492,000 followers. The photos and the dresses became so popular that in 2014, Mayhem got to design her own line for CrewCuts (JCrew’s kids collection).
Key Emotions:
- Joy
- Awe
- Surprise
“After we made our first paper dress, Mayhem requested another the very next day. Then another the day after that. And no one is more surprised than I am, that she still wants to make them nearly 9 months later. I have no idea if it will continue, but as long as she wants to make them, we’ll keep doing it”
— Angie Keiser
All The Feels
So now that we have taken a look at a few photo projects that have gone viral, it’s safe to say that they all have one common factor that has made them go viral. This factor is emotion. Each photo project is different in it’s own way, but at the end of the day they all contained and were driven by emotions that people can connect with.
We all feel joy.
We all feel anger.
We all feel surprise.
Think about what kinds of photo’s catch your eye. The ones that stand out the most tap into one of those 7 “high-arousal” emotions. When you can personally relate to something, that is when your photos become personal for someone else. When it’s personal, you’ll feel the need to share…. thus a viral photo project is born.
