Our Brain Dictates How We See: Our Eyes Are Only The Lens

By David Osborn Photography

It’s often a popular, passionate, and even argumentative debate among photographers when discussing what defines a “good” photo. Indeed, is it even possible? Photography is artistic self-expression without rules. We frequently dismiss “good” as a purely subjective matter of personal taste. You might love natural landscapes, but I prefer intricate architecture. If simply “liking” something is all it takes, then any photo is “good” to someone, somewhere, and the discussion has no answer. Or does it?

Beyond Just “Like”

Think about it: I like oranges, you like apples. That’s a straightforward matter of personal preference, neither right nor wrong. But what if those oranges and apples were old and mouldy? Would we still like them? No, and everyone would agree. “Like” is about personal preference, but “good” and “bad” are judged differently, and generally, most people will agree. Good photography, for instance, typically has a “wow” factor people like.

Let’s put “like” and even photography aside for a moment. Consider an analogy – your daily commute. Every morning, you wake up, have breakfast, jump in your car, and drive twenty minutes to work. Same routine, every day. If I asked you later, “What did you see on your drive today?” you’d likely struggle to answer. You “saw” every step of the journey, but you probably don’t recall any specific details because little happened to think about consciously.

Now, imagine the same scenario, but halfway to work, someone suddenly walks out into the road, and you slam on the brakes to avoid them. It’s a near miss. When you get to work, if I ask you, “What did you see today?” Now, you could tell me instantly, in minute detail. That person in front of your car made your journey radically different to normal and instantly memorable.

You might be thinking, “This is obvious, but what’s it got to do with photography?” – Stay with me. Photographs are often weak or fail for reasons we don’t consciously understand because we all process pictures subconsciously. Being subconscious means we don’t understand the specific reasons “why” pictures are weak or fail; it’s just a feeling we have. If we examine what happens at a subconscious level, we get valuable insights into what makes a “good” or “bad” photograph. This story focuses on only one aspect of those insights: the “disruptor”.

The Brain’s Efficiency and The Disrupter

From a psychological perspective, the person walking out in front of your car is a “disrupter.” That disruptor created a “wow” factor in your journey, something different and memorable. Let’s examine this from the perspective of the brain.

Our brains are incredibly efficient, hardwired to automate as many processes as possible. This efficiency reduces the need for constant, deliberate thinking, which requires significant time, energy, and resources. To achieve efficiency and conserve resources, our brain primarily operates on two levels: subconscious and conscious. The subconscious handles most of our daily processing, accounting for approximately 90% of routine tasks. At the same time, the conscious level is more suited for complex problem-solving and planning, which we refer to as “thinking”.

Therefore, for efficiency, the brain has a predictive process; we predict “what we will see” based on our prior “knowledge and experience”. If “what we see” matches “what we expect to see”, our brain handles the event automatically and subconsciously. This automation eliminates the need for intense thinking and conserves valuable resources.

On your first commute, the journey perfectly matched your prediction of the route, based on your prior knowledge and experience of having travelled it many times. Your eyes saw everything, but because everything you saw confirmed every prediction of what you should see, your brain processed the entire journey automatically and subconsciously. Therefore, you can’t recall the specific details because the conscious level only played a minor role in the journey. Analysing, or thinking about every detail of your trip for no benefit, would require enormous processing resources; it is a total inefficiency, a waste of resources and extremely tiring.

However, on the second day, your journey had a “disruptor”. Something happened that didn’t match your prediction; “what you predicted to see” based on your “prior knowledge and experience” of the journey. In a millisecond, your brain shifts from automated, subconscious processing to resource-intensive, conscious investigation. Its goal: to investigate and solve the problem of a person being on the road. That “disruptor” made it a “wow” moment and, importantly, made it memorable. – A “disruptor” in psychology is an unexpected event or stimulus that breaks a predicted pattern, something not predicted or expected.

The Disrupter in Photography

Now, let’s apply this to photography.

Good photography is thought-provoking. Its purpose is to ignite the viewer’s curiosity, imagination, and feelings, and to evoke an emotional or intellectual response. Pictures are like conversations: your image makes a statement, and the viewer responds. Photography that fails to stimulate a response is like a dead-end conversation – dull and uninteresting, offering the viewer no benefit or reward. A viewer might not “like” your photograph, but it must stimulate them to be considered “good”. The emotional response is the purpose of the picture for the viewer.

When we show people pictures that match “what people predict to see” or “have seen countless times before”, their brains process these pictures automatically and subconsciously. There’s little conscious stimulation triggered because they match their prior knowledge and experience of having seen similar pictures many times before; there’s no reason to engage with them at the conscious level, there’s no discrepancy to resolve, so they fail to find the photograph “interesting”. From this perspective, such a picture can be classified as “bad” because it fails to stimulate the viewer; the viewer gains no benefit from looking at it.

However, a “good” photograph doesn’t simply show us “what we predict to see” or “have seen before”. One way to achieve this is to include a “disrupter” element in the picture that forces us to pause the automated subconscious process and switch to a conscious investigation. A “disruptor” forces us to understand “why” the picture doesn’t match “what we expected to see”. The “disrupter” triggers thought. A disruptor means being different, don’t give viewers “what they expect to see”. Viewers might say, “I don’t like the picture myself, but it’s interesting!” This reaction is enough to confirm it as a “good photograph”.

The key takeaway is: don’t undervalue the power of “different”. Literal and generic-looking images, while popular and promoted as ‘real photography,’ contradict the psychology that defines what is interesting. If a picture is not interesting, how can we call it ‘good’? It makes no difference HOW your picture is different, what only matters is that it shows something different from “what people expect to see”.

The “disrupter element” is one aspect of pictures. There are many other elements, of course, but this story focuses solely on and explains the “disruptor” principle. The brain is an incredibly complex organ, and this explanation is oversimplified to illustrate the principle. The second takeaway is that by learning how to create good photographs for “other people”, you will make better photographs for yourself and become a better photographer overall. The key is understanding human perception and “how pictures work”, my pet subject.

David Osborn Photography, London, UK.
David’s website is www.davidosbornphotography.com, which explains details of his workshop, tutorials, and much more.

Do you use visual disruptors in your photography? How do you create images that stand out and make people pause? Join the forum discussion and share your thoughts: https://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=144899.0

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