Why Pros Matter: Their Photos, Says Study, Are More Memorable

January 28, 2015

By Laura Brauer

The world is awash in photographers. That’s a good thing! But it can also make it difficult for professionals to make the case for their payday.

The National Press Photographer’s Association (NPPA) is out with some new research that can help. They took 100 professional photographs and 100 images snapped by amateurs but used by news outlets as “user-generated content”, scrambled them up and presented them to people. Using sophisticated eye-tracking technology and personal surveys, NPPA-funded researchers sought to determine what photos held people’s interest, what they were drawn to, whether they read the captions and more.

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The results showed an overwhelming preference for professional photography. Study participants could tell 90 percent of the time whether an image was taken by an amateur or a professional.

But that’s not all. The NPPA also found:

— More time was spent, on average, with professionally generated photographs than with user-generated images.



— The 20 most memorable photographs were also taken by professionals. 

— People look first at faces…. And they are interested in the relationships between people in the frame, often looking back and forth, between faces and interactions.

— “Special access” to a scene or event was cited frequently when test subjects referred to what made a photograph worth publishing.

So the next time a client mentions in passing that their uncle the dentist with the expensive DLSR could do as good a job, politely remind them that the science suggests otherwise.