Tookapic hates people
Shots of people are some of the least liked photos in my project. This goes for
- street-style candid photography tookapic.com/photos/513301 tookapic.com/photos/530100 tookapic.com/photos/558018
- artsy theater shots tookapic.com/photos/515092
- posed natural light family portraits tookapic.com/photos/529144
- ridiculously good looking young men tookapic.com/photos/542206
- beautiful young girls tookapic.com/photos/556999
- facial hair tookapic.com/photos/556272
- Halloween group costumes from cult movies tookapic.com/photos/553779
- large groups posing tookapic.com/photos/549658
- candid sports tookapic.com/photos/552078
- sports action tookapic.com/photos/546416
Pretty much any time there is a person or people in the shot, it's a kiss of death, in the "Likes" department.
My question is: am I bad at photographing people, or is there a subconscious bias on Tookapic against clicking on and liking people photos?
If you, like me, are all over the place, and your subject and style varies wildly from day to day, do your people shots get more, fewer or an average number of likes?
ponzu Agree. I think as photographers we get excited about and attached to our human subjects. Maybe there is a bias relative to people photos on Tookapic, but it's not that viewers hate people photos, it's that the photographers post mediocre photos of people, to which they feel the emotional connection.
Gosia I think there's no bias. Maybe it's about emotions. About something special and different. Compare your list of photos with this one "Summer's not over till we say it's over" - excellent, btw.
ponzu Okay, it's a decent shot, and it got the likes, and I did not include it because it would have messed with my statistics.
"Something special and different", yes, Tookapickers are looking for that, I know that, because I do, too. So a photo of a person is hard to make "different" without crazy light or angle. But how is it that people react to a photo of a dog or a leaf, which is the same in every country, and anyone could take that photo given the same time of day, but photos of people, each of whom is unique by definition, are seen as generic? Have you thought about it?
We go "Ah, such a unique leaf", but what we really mean is: "Ponzu managed to photograph a generic leaf from a good angle in good light".
I am not sure I am an exception. I don't remember liking many people shots. But I also don't believe Tookapickers are posting many people shots. They may already know that people photos don't sell here. I don't think I am wrong about that, but I would love to be proven wrong.
I will continue shooting people and will try to get better.
The problem with shooting people is we get attracted to an interesting subject and forget all we learned about photography: composition, light, lines. So it is entirely possible that my people photos are not as good as my landscapes.
Gosia It's true that shooting people may be stressful. So that you forget about the rules, as you say. That's something to work on.
ponzu Agreed. Why do you think trivial shots of people don't get likes while trivial shots of other subjects, say, pets, do? I'll give you an example: "Young model" Let's call it a trivial natural light portrait. It made the model and her family very happy, and it was a personal achievement for me because I got the light and the pose right. Sure, I could have paid attention to the frizzy hair. I could have processed it for more "pop", but opted for a softer look. Why doesn't a successful trivial portrait like this make Tookapic people want to reach for the "Like" button? Do they think it's easy? Do they think I do this all the time? (I don't.) No one will say it's a bad portrait. But few people have clicked Like compared to some of the other pretty, but silly photos I have taken. It seems that either portraits are held to a higher standard, or... people just don't feel the connection with other people when the other people are not doing something crazy or are lit or cropped in a crazy way. I think there is a trend there, and I don't know I fully understand it, but I think I see it in my as well as others' projects. Look at the highest rated #people and #portrait photos. They are all weird. In a good way, but weird. Plain, solid portraits don't get the clicks.
ponzu Yes, that's probably it. I will continue working on it.
ponzu
The photos under your link give me hope, but note that
- at least half are pets
- many of the other ones are... I don't know what the word is, I started with "gimmicky", but it's not exactly that. They are "weird" or "over the top" or "overly creative". In other words, people's clicking fingers clearly reacted to something, but I don't know if that "something" is what I am looking for in people photography or am ready to introduce into mine.
Some got the clicks simply because of the subject, like a shot of the well liked Satoshi holding up a SuperHero sign. That photo did not have to be good.
Out of 24 photos that come up at the top for #portrait tag I would be happy to have taken four, maybe five or six.
I don't think that this selection of photos disproves my theory. But your example with your self-portrait series probably does. I have to check them out.
ponzu "Keep working". I was just asking myself today again, as I think we often do, who I am shooting for. That would determine what I need to work on. Do I need to work on pleasing Tookapic? That's silly, right? Work on impressing myself? I am impressed with the strangest things in photography, both my own and others'. So that's not a good enough direction, either. Please the client or the model if the work is unpaid? That's probably closer. Pleasing critics, collectors, prospective buyers of my photos? Wouldn't that be nice. Yes, I'll keep working and I'll keep keeping things in perspective, which sometimes is hard.
ponzu It is. Thank you for that. I wanted to do the same thing and I still might. I wanted to dedicate one month of my 365 project to portraits, I am just not sure that I am ready to plunge in right now. It is very hard to take a photo a day, any photo, during the work week.
ponzu By the way, notice, too, how few likes he gets on many of those. Sort of proves my point.
Paweł Kadysz I will answer you, but I need time to process the question. It'll take me a bit longer than usual because I need to calm down after reading the Talk title :P
ponzu The title was meant to excite. I can think of changing it.
ponzu Hmm, too late. At least you know that the title was intentionally provocative and I did not mean to upset you.
ponzu Well, the people who produced (and admired) the "I shoot people" T-Shirt should be able to live with this title just fine. I would have changed it after I learned that it upset Pawel, but the original post and the title cannot be changed after a few minutes.
Artur Łobocki I think that photos of people (specially in street photography) should be not so... obvious. Besides making it by phone camera is quite difficult.
Magda Korzewska I think you are right, portraits are not likes collector but silhouette are very much. This is a least what I have noticed.
ponzu I think you get me. The topic was not about the quality of my people photos and not about what people think about people photos. But about how Tookapic as a hive mind reacts to different types of photos.
Gosia You said: 'So a photo of a person is hard to make "different" without crazy light or angle.'
Not necessarily. I'll give you an excellent example, Ian's recent portraits:
tookapic.com/ianprince/galleri...
Simple, white background. Black and white. And people, captured as they truly are. Living, smiling, breathing.
ponzu Good (counter)example, thank you!
His photos disprove one of my points and proves another. When I start typing, I generate so many thoughts, I can't keep up with all of them myself.
I said (not in the original post, but in my first comment, an elaboration of sorts):
"Do people's clicking fingers react to solid, simple compositions?"
The answer seems to be: yes.
agnieszka bladzik I love portraits and people in general on photos. people bring emotions, feelings. the way to good portrait is not the angle and making photo different, the way to good portrait is to getting know the person you are shooting and then try to show it on the photo. so the photo is interesting because it make you think about the person on it. this is what all professional photographers will tell you - try watching some on YT eg. youtube.com/watch?v=OWq7ToR2U8... Street photography is bit different - you can't know the person - so the most interesting are the one that are not obvious
and to answer your question i don't think tookapic is bias in this matter, just people recognize good portraits
ponzu Also, I must remind myself that I'm not in it for the Likes. I am trying to document my photographic year, maybe learn something, and maybe make some new friends. If on a given day I shot a soccer match or went to a goodbye party with a colleague or saw a theater production or did a family shoot, I believe that narrows down my choices as far as what to post, even if I shot some prettier flowers or clouds or landscapes.
My 365 project is not dedicated to people photography, nor to any other specific kind -- at this point. It is an attempt to review a year spent with a camera in hand to see what, if anything, it will have taught me.
I started this topic to test whether I have detected a real trend on Tookapic, or whether my people photos are just less clickable than my other photos. I am okay with that if that is the case.
Gogi Golzman
can i ask you a question ? your project is for gaining likes ?
or to challenge & make yourself a better photographer ??
instead of saying that people don't like your "people" photos .
think about "what should i do differently to make other like my "people" photos more.
maybe try to learn some new technique.
try to learn about different lighting.
maybe try to watch some other good photos of people
and see how can you do something like those photos.. but in your own way. i'm sorry to break the illusion of clicking the button and expect for likes and followers.. try to make your self better.. always .. and believe me .. the likes and followers will come .
ponzu Hmm... Great minds think alike. I happen to have answered your question right before you asked it. Amazing!
ponzu You may have misunderstood my point, my fault. I have a theory that people photos on Tookapic don't get a lot of likes. I used my photos as an illustration because I have easy access to the stats. But I can open tookapic.com/photos?sort=recen... and start hovering over photos to see if people photos get more, same or fewer likes than non-people photo from the same time span. Or go to tookapic.com/photos and see how many top photos are of people.
That's what I am talking about.
Gogi Golzman
i see your point man .. and its really understood. my point is really simple .. others won't like a people or portrait photo
cause its not really good ... so if you or me want to get likes on those type of photos. we should do our best job as i said earlier..
most of my best photos are related from those categories .. and there is very simple reason. every time i take a photo of those categories i'm trying to do my best .. i have my agenda .. my vision .. i learn everyday new techniques . or new angles .. i'm trying to tell a story in those photos ..
i'll give you some examples from my photos
"Extreme razor!" - one of my top photos ..
if it wasn't in action and just a simple photo of two persons sitting in a car . let's admit. it could be boring as hell
"Birthday Girl" - my sisters birthday photo. if i wasn't editing the cakes and the flowers in the air .. and just putted her with this cake in front of a nice background .. it could boring as well .. the lights . the sun flare from the left .. more drama, more interest .. some type of mood .. it makes the different =]
"la muerta" - my girlfriends halloween costume. let's imagine for a moment the most simple shot of her makeup. no roses tier .. no smoke and no color grading on the photo. people won't even open the photo ..
"Paradise" - imagine this same shot . with different pose (regular pose, sitting and that's it.
no surfers around the background .. no sunny day ..
b-o-r-i-n-g
And these are only 4 photos of my "top photos"
i hope you'll get my point .. it's not about the statistics.
it's about what we do to upgrade our statistics =]
ponzu In the top 24 photos in tookapic.com/photos as of right now, there are two people photos if you count "Golden road 2". I don't, I consider it a landscape. Otherwise, there is one photo of a person at #17. Out of 24. Is this real or am I imagining it?
And if users submit fewer people photos, that could be in response to low likeability, couldn't it?
ponzu Clicking "Load more" brings up... I tried counting, but gave up, let's hypothesize it's 144 photos (because URL says Page6 and there seems to be 24 photos per page). The next photo of a person is at #39. That's two people photos in the top 50. And the next one is at #77. Altogether, there are six people photos in the top 144. And that's counting liberally, in some of them people are secondary to the scene. There are only *three* portraits, all good ones. Out of 144 top photos.
I think I convinced myself. I don't think there is a reason to stop shooting and posting people, but I will now feel differently about the counts. I think low counts for people photos are normal and high ones are a recognition of some kind of an achievement.
ponzu I am not here for the likes, no. But I am here to learn about photography. And the thing I am curious about learning right now is what sells on Tookapic as far as people photos. My working hypothesis is a strong, clean composition. More so than interesting faces or pleasing tones and light. Let's see if I can prove it. I have been meaning to learn to clean up my composition for a long time.
Katrina Yu I used to make a living posing people. I'm a portrait photographer.
And this is what I know, it has something to do with people's unconscious.
When a straight line is slight to the right, we don't really know it's not straight but our unconscious is making us uncomfortable.
This applies to photos of why architecture, dogs, babies have a more natural feel to it. We see a bridge for example and no matter what angle you'll shot it at, all the lines will still connect and your brain will process it as natural.
Dogs or animals even in motion "pose" so naturally (it's their nature) that our brain sees the photo as a whole.
Babies are also all that curve because their bodies are still "natural" that why there's nothing wrong with it.
Now people are hard. Because as we grow older our bodies start to deform. Our spines get crooked, are faces are uneven...there are indeed unflattering sides and if a person doesn't know how to pose a human to make it look natural the brain will process the photo as imbalance, unperfect thus back to the analogy of the straight line, we see it as good light/angle but still not sure why it's not working.
Posing people is hard and that's why really good portrait photographers make taking a portrait look so easy but that's because they are pose-masters!
That's why there's a profession called "modeling" and the job description is to know how to pose.
I took the liberty to check some of your photos and left a comment on why it's not working, base on my experience. (imgur.com/a/5fBLH)
The "Golden hour" (let's say it's your family) your wife's pose is too masculine, she should have bent her right knee to give her that S curve and instead of her hand on her waist should be on her daughter's shoulder.
The girls are not intimate, the younger one's arm should be on her sister's waist to form a connection, and bend of a leg to get that curve too.
Your left hand should be on your daughter's shoulder, there's no connection.
Then everyone's head to be titled a bit inside to show that intimacy.
At first glance, "Golden hour", is well lit but why it didn't work? There's no connection even with the subjects.
2nd, "Young model", pose again.
Too masculine. Open shoulder pose is for men to give it a more dominant look women need to look demure, soft so you have to try giving her shoulder an arch next time and have her elongate her neck then tilt the face a bit so that the nose is one line with the face to give it some mystery.
Last, "Sad happy hour". No balance on the line, very distracting.
I didn't get to see every photo you've mentioned but this is probably the main reason why a photo work and doesn't. It's all about the unconscious and how our brain perceives the lines, the connection...it's the little things we don't really notice but once pointed out gets very obvious.
**Pardon for grammar and run on sentences. Didn't proofread.
ponzu Thank you! These are excellent pointers that I will keeping coming back to (I could use a clarification on your points and advice on the young girl's shot). What I believe I convinced myself of over the course of today and looking at various feeds and individual photos, is that a shot such as "Golden hour" by its nature, even if perfectly executed (and I agree with all your observations about its flaws) would not get the likes that "Untitled" would or "Pencils" or "hoops #2" (just pulling things out of the current Popular feed), or, to include a highly liked portrait, "Scarf" And I can see why. Improving one's portrait photography is one thing -- and I am determined to continue on that path. Shooting photos of people that get Likes is quite another. And I want to conquer that one as well! :)
With all that said, the family portrait got 28 likes. I have 52 followers now, but had a lot fewer on October 1. That is a good likeability ratio. I had higher expectations for the girl's portrait, but it needs to be processed differently to start winning popularity contests. Thank you again! Looking forward to continuing talking to you. I have a lot to learn from you.
Katrina Yu I have nothing against the 4 photos you reference but I don't see the point of it being an exceptional photo too. Likes don't mean it's a successful photo. Successful doesn't only mean it's pretty but actually speaks on so many levels, one where people keep going back too just because.
Instead of conquering getting "random" likes & followers focus on acquiring TRUE likes/followers, a true fan. A true fan is who will buy anything you produce; who shares your work with others; who will pay for your "behind the scenes" of your free content; they will drive 100 miles to go to your meetup/talks etc. These are the ones that matter, the rest are just noise.
It's nice to see the number of likes go up, the followers increases, your exposure gets bigger but the problem, of course, is that more noise is not better noise.
This looks like winning (the numbers are going up!), but it's actually a double-edged form of losing.
First, you're polluting a powerful space, turning signals into noise and bringing down the level of discourse for everyone. And second, you're wasting your time when you could be building a tribe instead, could be earning permission, could be creating a channel where your voice is actually welcomed.
Either be better at pump and dump than anyone else, get your numbers into the millions, outmass those that choose to use mass and always dance at the edge of spam (in which the number of those you offend or turn off forever keep increasing),
or
Relentlessly focus. Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that's worth owning and an audience that cares.
Only one is an asset of value that is actually worth millions.
More details about true fans here: kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-f...
ponzu I really liked your thoughts. Noise is an issue. Creating noise is also an issue. Winning at the wrong game and losing because of it is a very interesting concept. Thank you!
ponzu This is a long thread, and I am making it longer. There were two questions in the original post.
1. "Am I bad at photographing people, or is there a subconscious bias on Tookapic against clicking on and liking people photos?
I now believe the answer is "Both".
2. "Do your people shots get more, fewer or an average number of likes?"
I believe I have heard one answer so far. tookapic.com/lukaszbrozek said his self-portraits are some of his most popular photos. But that could be because he is such a good looking guy :)
Mikołaj Just my two cents: very often there's a difference between a technically good photo and a photo that's meaningful for you. Putting familiar faces in the frame gives it a great value for you, but – sorry for lack of empathy – they're just random people for everyone else. Here's my example: "Madrid, day 2". Objectively, there's absolutely nothing special about this picture in terms of composition, light, colors and generally speaking, artistic value, so I don't mind getting less likes for it at all. But for me, it means much more than all the other photos I took that day and you can probably relate to it.
Of course, it's still possible to take technically and artistically great photos of people and we've already got some perfect examples in this thread. The problem is that they're much harder to achieve, because people get intimidated in front of the camera, it takes some knowledge and experience to find good angles and you need plenty of time for that, before your model runs out of patience.
ponzu Let me see if we are on the same page. People take photos of people for various reasons. Agreed. Different types of photos require different technical and quality parameters. Check. We will post the photos of people we took on any given day to Tookapic for our own reasons. Right. We should not expect likes on photos that we took and posted for personal reasons. Also correct.
I don't think we disagree on any of your (or my) points. I am just curious why Tookapickers are not clicking Like more on photos of people unless these photos are fashion magazine quality "Scarf" or of babies/kids.
Maybe I am approaching this all wrong. Instead of asking why people are not clicking Like more on people photos, I should we wondering why people _do_ click Like when they do. And work my way back from it.
Clicking Like is close to a reflex. I don't think any of us give it thought. We just do it. What makes us? There may already have been a discussion on this.
I know that debut photos get a lot of encouragement Likes. This is my most liked shot to date: "Start today"
Daniel Zaleski I will keep it simple: it's not facebook ;)
ponzu Thank you, Daniel. Now, which question were you answering? :)
Jennifer I rarely like or hit-the-button-like photos of people, and I'm not sure why. I think people are just so dynamic that it's hard to correctly capture the full range of a person, as opposed to a leaf in the sunshine or a pretty landscape. Here are some of the few people-photos on tookapic that I fell for, and why.
tl;dr: I like ones that make me interested in the person while also being visually appealing somehow
"thank you" - the framing, the man's little half smile intrigues me, the fleeting feeling of it like they're driving away, the way it seems like he just couldn't help but open the window even in the rain
tookapic.com/photos/497691 - dramatic, good framing with the sweep of the hood across his face, great lighting from under so that you can see details of his face despite the hood, black and white used very well to focus on figure and lines, and honestly he's so pretty
tookapic.com/photos/168442 - great lighting where they're visible but lined in this beautiful glow, they look so playful and happy, plus a bit of symmetry in their outfits (maybe not intentional, but i still like it)
"🏝" - focus leads you to the person, and he intrigues me - what's he looking at? makes me feel deeply pensive
"i" - juxtaposition of beautiful glowing nature with a secluded, isolated man staring into his phone.
"Friends" - quirky and cute! an adorable couple photo that makes me smile and feel happy for them
"Untitled" - love the coloring and positioning here, the girl's expression... makes me wonder what she's thinking about.
"Not a stranger #2 - Rupam" - clean and simple, naturally saying hello with a genuine little smile
agnieszka bladzik :D @Jennifer you read my photo pretty well
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ponzu This toy "Maui Goes Hiking" got nearly three times as many likes as this good looking guy "Power and grace" Play an amateur psychologist for me and explain how it is possible.
Do people's clicking fingers react to solid, simple compositions? Catchy colors? Gimmicky DoF and processing? Or is there a specific bias against people photos?
It is harder to make a good photo of people than of a flower or a toy. I hope that's obvious. Or maybe we assume the opposite, that it is easier and more common to photograph people, and we don't feel the impulse to react to a solid people photo. (I believe at least some of the photos I linked above are solid, not all.)