You’re No Ansel Adams from Wired

These samples of memorable and forgettable photos are from a recent study. We’ve put the forgettable images in the top row, and the more memorable ones along the bottom. Images courtesy Oliva and Torralba labs.

It’s more likely you’ve heard of Ansel Adams than of Marc Riboud, but it turns out you may be more inclined to remember the latter’s photographs.

According to a recent study, photos with people in them are more likely to stick in the viewer’s memory after seeing a series of photos. Researchers at MIT have created a computer algorithm to track which photos people remembered most, and they’ve found that portraits tend to trump landscapes in memorability.

To some of us, this is not news: Even Grandma knew that when you take a picture of a Christmas tree, you get all the grandchildren lined up in front of it. For others, the entire premise of the study is suspect.

Can you guess which of these images would be the most memorable? Give up? It’s the top left and bottom right ones. Images courtesy Oliva and Torralba labs.

“That’s hilarious,” says Randy Greenwell, Director of Photography at The Virginian-Pilot. “A machine telling people what is memorable? I’m not ready to trade in my photo editors yet. It takes a human to understand human feelings. And as far as landscapes go, I have two words for you: Ansel Adams.”

It has always been assumed what was memorable for one person, was not necessarily memorable for the next, and so these new findings seem to fly in the face of the idea that beauty lay in the eye of the beholder. But researchers draw an important distinction in the results.

“Pleasantness and memorability are not the same,” says MIT graduate student Phillip Isola in a statement.

There is no denying that “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941” is an amazing photograph, but if your goal is to have your images stick in the visual craw of your friends on Flickr or your followers on Twitter, you may want to cut some of the fluffy clouds and sunsets. The study suggests that snaps containing humans, followed by things with human-like scale (like your photos of your Slurpee at 7-Eleven) are the photographs recalled by the viewer.

The MIT team says the algorithm could be used by book publishers to determine the best photograph for a cover or news editors looking for the most memorable photograph.