How much are you influenced by what you know about a person when you take a picture?

The appearance of a photograph does not depend so much on the subject, as to who is behind the car to and he knows the subject.
To demonstrate this, Canon Australia has commissioned a video experiment entitled “Decoy”, in which six photographers were invited to portray the same man, with the assignment to take a picture that corresponded to his character.
Each of the photographers, however, has been told a different story on the subject of the portrait: a photographer was told that the man was a “self-made man” millionaire, another was told that the man had saved someone’s life, yet another was told that the man was an ex-convict, a fisherman, a medium, a former alcoholic.
All stories were invented (the man is an actor), but each of them has influenced the photographer to decide how to take the picture. The result is that the portraits are different from each other, seem to six different people, but “look like the story” that photographers thought they had to tell in their pictures.

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I sit here stunned by what a brilliant job they did portraying his alleged character in their photos! I wonder whether I would have done such a good job showing what I believed to be his character. On the other hand I’m also surprised by how much they limited their creativity based on what they knew of the person.

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Fantastic example of what we bring to the images from behind the lens! I agree with @Morgan_Hardwood that they did an amazing job capturing the character they were sold.

I’d be interested to see the 6 final images without knowing which was which story. Then see how we, as viewers, might bring our own preconceived notions to them…

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These are all from @Dario_M’s post here: http://www.ilpost.it/2015/11/11/canon-esperimento-pregiudizi-ritratto-fotografia/pescatore-2/

Which one do you think is which? (ty @Ofnuts for pointing out that if you hover your mouse over the image, you’ll see the image name - so avoid it if you don’t want it given away…)

  • Fisherman
  • Millionaire (self-made)
  • Ex-convict
  • Psychic
  • Saved someones life
  • Ex-alcoholic

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Nice exercise!

For me the last one is the medium, because of the empty chair that suggest a spot for “someone else”

Should we answer without looking at the file names that show up when we hover the mouse? :sunglasses:

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I wasn’t sure the forum would actually grab the file name from the original site, but apparently it does :).

It’s up to you to decide if you want to answer before or after checking, of course. I think it’s a neat exercise in what expectations you may bring personally to the images… :wink:

For me:

  • millionaire
  • ex-alcoholic
  • saved life
  • ex convicted
  • fisherman
  • psychic
    And yes, I saw the file name. Just after I answered :confounded:

When I first saw this article I thought of Yousuf Karsh’s 1941 portrait of Winston Churchill that he called The Roaring Lion. The viewer’s perception of that portrait differs greatly from the reality of the moment the photo was taken.

It is the (false) perception that has made The Roaring Lion one of the most iconic portraits ever taken.

The photographer’s viewpoint is important, but not as important as the viewer’s.

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If I recall, didn’t Karsh take away Churchill’s cigar just before taking that portrait? (Hence the look he elicited from him):

I believe Karsh said that his favorite of the set of images was this one from a little bit later when the mood was a tad lighter… :smiley:

Yes, that is what I was alluding to. The first photo was (and is) perceived as the British Bulldog in it’s finest fighting spirit whereas the reality was that Churchill was truculent, uncooperative, perverse.

You are also correct in stating that Karsh preferred the smiling photo (taken a few moments later when Churchill had calmed down).

The Roaring Lion established the reputation of the then 24 year old Karsh around the world (at least in the non-Axis part of the world) and he never looked back.

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To be fair, if I could lay claim to an image like that, I wouldn’t ever look back either… :smiley:

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I am not sure how much this experiment really tells. Part of the differences might have com (and I am sure they did) from the story. However, there wasn’t just different stories behind the camera but also different photographers. So to make this a sound experiment they would have to take a single photog, tell them a story, let them take the shot, remove the memories of it, rinse and repeat. Not practical, I know. But maybe I am too much a scientist to accept this kind of setting.

The images are nice though. :smile:

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An interesting thread and a lively discussion.

It is not only the ‘story’ of the sitter that influences the picture.

Many things influence the shot.

The light we are presented with, our mood, the mood of the sitter, the rapport we build with the sitter, our own style for portraits, the props at hand on set, other people in the room, the equipment we have, the clothes the sitter is wearing and what the terms of reference are from the sitter i.e. what do they want to get from the shoot.

I tend to agree with ‘houz’, I don’t think the experiment tells us a great deal, other than we are all individuals and ‘paint with light’ in our own style

Have a nice day

Phil

I think the original sequence of images makes a useful teaching aid. We need the science of ‘houz’ to create the tools we use to create additional things that influence the shots taken by ‘Phil_Howcroft’.

I try always to be mindful that we live in a world where it is accepted that Da Vinci created Mona Lisa’s smile but Karsh only captured Churchill’s scowl. The reality is, of course, that the paintbrush of the modern digital photographer is manufactured by Wacom.

Robert

No one’s claiming this to be a sound scientific study, and yes everything has an influence including the temperament of each photographer’s cat, but you look at the images and it’s immediately clear which one is the ex-con and which one the millionaire. Each of these different photographers was right on the mark with the character’s story. This small test speaks loudly that as a professional photographer, the subject’s story seems to have the deciding say in the tone of the outcome more than anything else. Which is both interesting and worrying, and worth keeping in mind.

Well, to me every shot besides the ex inmate could be the millionaire. They are not THAT different, are they? Maybe the stories are not influencing the photographers but the viewers?

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I just realized that I hadn’t actually vocalized a similar thought here (maybe on irc?).

This is a similar type of discussion (just expanded) I think to captioning of images. Where you are providing some meta information beyond just the image. I believe this does direct a viewer down a notional path, and this demonstrates something along the same lines.

Imagine seeing these images out of the context - or even choosing a single one of the back-storys for all the images (like if they were all images from an article about a fisherman). I could see each image as part of a series from an article about this man (with each image possibly representing a particular time in his life - like the ex-con image could just as easily stand in for troubled times).

I was going to write a funny faux-article about a fisherman and use the images as parts of various stages of the fake story to illustrate my point, but I’m busy with some other things atm. I may come back and do it for fun, though (unless someone else wants to try :slight_smile: ).

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