psychology

Selfie Culture: What Your Choice of Camera Angle Says About You

Over the past decade, selfies have become a mainstay of popular culture. If the #selfie hashtag first appeared in 2004, it was the release of the iPhone 4 in 2010 that saw the pictures go viral. Three years later, the Oxford English Dictionary crowned “selfie” word of the year.

How You Live Your Life is Reflected in How You Take Photos

I look at hundreds of photographs everyday and I’ve noticed that how people take photos is in direct correlation to how they live their day to day lives. This may not sound like a startlingly profound fact but, put simply: your personality can create the biggest barrier to achieving interesting and unique photographs.

A Contrapposto Pose Makes Women Look More Attractive, Study Finds

Contrapposto, Italian for "counterpoise", is a type of pose used since ancient times in which a person stands with most of his or her weight on one foot so the shoulders and arms twist away from the same plane as the hips and legs. It seems artists of old were onto something, as a new study has found that contrapposto posing makes people look more attractive.

How is Photography Affecting Us?

In the past two decades, most people went from not carrying a camera to always having a smartphone camera with them at all times. With millions upon millions of photos shot (and shared) every single day, how is this explosion in photography affecting us? Here's a 10-minute video by WIRED that explores that question.

Visual Self Harm: Images I Don’t Want to See

I found an image that I don't want to see. Too familiar, and so, too hurtful. But as the Internet meme jokes, "What has been seen can't be unseen." In that context, such images are considered shocking, graphic, violent. The image I refer to, however, is far removed from any of these labels. But for me, there it is, that Punctum that Barthes spoke of. As I write, Google Chrome suggests the correct spelling is 'puncture' -- how appropriate.

Why Bad Photographers Think They’re Good

Did you know that the worse you are at photography, the more likely it is that you think you're great at it? It's a cognitive bias in psychology called the Dunning–Kruger effect. Here's an inspiring 9-minute video by photographer Jamie Windsor on how you can avoid falling into this common mental trap and actually become a better photographer.

How to Deal With Creative Envy as a Photographer

In his signature story-telling style, photographer Sean Tucker sits us down in this video for a 10-minute talk about handling creative envy and jealousy as a photographer or videographer. As he says, comparing yourself to other creatives can stall your career and breed resentment, and it’s important to know how to identify and check these thoughts.

Why Exercise Makes You a Better Photographer

I was nervous and excited. I had just left my 9 to 5 cubicle career and jumped head-first into full-time photography. Over the next 2 months, I would be traveling all over the world with a friend in order to build my portfolio. At this point, though, my sedentary lifestyle had caught up to me and I was about 25lbs overweight.

10 Myths About the Rule of Thirds

My name is Tavis Leaf Glover, and I’m an artist just like you, trying to create art that I can be proud of and share with the world. Though, something really hindered me in the beginning... the Rule of Thirds.

I want to shed some light on the Rule of Thirds Myths we’ve all been forcefully spoon fed during our creative infancy, which continues to linger as our compositions mature.

Anxiety Disorder Depicted Through Self-Portraits

LSU photography student Katie Joy Crawford has personally struggled with general anxiety disorder for over a decade. For her senior thesis exhibition, she chose to make her inner experience the subject of a series of self-portraits. The project is titled "My Anxious Heart."

Photo Sharing is Hurting Our Enjoyment of Life, Study Finds

Smartphones and social networks have made snapping and sharing photos extremely easy to do, allowing us to preserve our memories and broadcast our experiences. It's not all positive, though: there are downsides to our snap- and selfie-happy culture.

A new study has found that 58% of people believe that "posting the perfect picture has prevented them from enjoying life's experiences."

Psyphotology: A Look at Why People Are Afraid to Be In Front of a Camera, and How to Fix That

Well known headshot photographer Peter Hurley has teamed up with respected psychologist Anna Rowley to develop a way for people to overcome their fear of being in front of a camera.

The pair call this research and application Psyphotology, a clever wordplay on psychology and photography. Their hope is to impact the world by helping us gain self-acceptance rather than focusing on criticism.

The Dunning-Kruger Peak of Photography

This humorous graphic was created by Lee Hutchinson over at Ars Technica in a recent article comparing the iPhone 6 Plus to a Canon DSLR. It suggests that people who are just starting out in photography commonly experience a period of delusion in which they suddenly think they are much greater at photography than they actually are.

Comfort Objects: Portraits of Children and the Dolls, Blankets and Stuffed Animals They Hold Dear

Did you ever have a 'comfort object' as a kid? Maybe it was a security blanket, or a beloved stuffed animal that you carried around everywhere. Maybe you still have it somewhere in the attic where it's more socially acceptable now that you're an adult.

These objects meant, at least for a time, the world to us; A connection to security and safety that was, if irrational, also undeniably comforting. And it's these objects and the children who love them that make up photographer Anna Ream's recent series Comfort Objects.

The Image, Deconstructed: Offering Insight Into Quality Photojournalism

We love seeing and hearing about the process of creating an image. The motivation behind a photo combined with a glimpse at how it was shot can be both inspirational and educational, which is a powerful combo.

But while there are plenty of behind the scenes videos and articles dedicated to studio photography, one of the genres you don't get to hear as much about is photojournalism. That's where The Image, Deconstructed website comes in.

Incredible Steel Wool Light Paintings Done to Look Like Rorschach Ink Blots

Light-painting, like time-lapse, is a genre of photography that is packed full of talent, making it really hard to pick quality work to feature (if you haven't already, check out this list of 10 amazing light-painting photogs you should follow right away).

We were thrilled, therefore, when we stumbled across Nicolas Rivals' series of steel wool light painting Rorschach tests dubbed, simply enough, Light Rorchach.

Taking Photographs Weakens Memories, Psychological Study Finds

Here's something that both photographers and the typical millennial have to look forward to in old age: Your memory is going to suck because of all the photos you took when you should have been paying attention to what was happening around you.

That's the upshot of a new psychological study that finds you can have a good photographic record of an event or a good memory, but not both.

The Instagram Diet: Looking at Pictures of Food Curbs Appetite, Study Finds

Believing the world cares what you had for lunch may still be a symptom of narcissism, but a recent study seems to indicate that it could at least be a useful form of narcissism.

The study, which was conducted by marketing researchers at Brigham Young University, found that the more time people spend looking at pictures of food, the less interested they become in actually eating that same foods. Results were published recently in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Your Style, Your Personality

In all art forms; music, writing, architecture, photography, whatever; originality and innovation are the things that produce the best works from the best artists. A lot of advice on how to improve your art focusses on technical and technological aspects; often with a cursory “develop your own style” thrown in somewhere. It’s a difficult thing to explain or teach: how do you develop your vision or style? And how do you know if you’ve found it?

The Science of G.A.S.

People will do just about anything to alleviate their anxiety. During the last year of writing my doctoral thesis, the worry about being able to finish grew increasingly heavy. The relentless grind of research, constantly being told that your work is inadequate, and believing that 80-hour workweeks are average has its tolls on all students. Once you reach the edge of this process and are pulverized into oblivion, you get a nice, shiny PhD.

You may be wondering what got me through this. The answer? Buying a ton of camera equipment. To photographers, this type of retail therapy is known as gear acquisition syndrome. Someone with this syndrome impulsively buys cameras and related gear, amassing more camera gear than they can realistically use.

Memories, Photographs, and the Human Brain

There has been a good deal written about the similarities of the camera to the eye as well as the computer to human memory. What I would like to do is clarify the uniqueness of the human brain from camera technology and at the same time show the similarities between brain function, photography and cognition.