Viewing art

How long do we spend, on average, viewing a photograph? The Louvre found that people looked at the Mona Lisa an average of 15 seconds! According to a study published in Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts in 2017 the average person spends just over 27 seconds looking at a great work of art, Twenty-seven seconds!

I set a timer for 27 seconds and viewed the above photograph for 27 seconds. I was amazed at how short of a period of time that was, and I’ve seen this photograph hundreds of times before. How do we get viewers to spend more time looking at our photographs?

Look at these 11 eye-popping statistics on how content and technology are changing humans (as compiled in an infographic from WebDAM, below):

• The average person gets distracted in eight seconds, though a mere 2.8 seconds is enough to distract some people.
• 81 percent of people only skim the content they read online. (Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has written that the average user reads at most 20 to 28 percent of words during an average visit.)
• People form a first impression in a mere 50 milliseconds.
• An estimated 84 percent of communications will be visual by 2018.
• An estimated 79 percent of internet traffic will be video content by 2018.
• Posts that include images produce 650 percent higher engagement than text-only posts.
• People are 85 percent more likely to buy a product after viewing a product video.
• Posts with videos attract 3X more links than text-only posts.
• Tumblr’s active user base has grown by 120 percent.
• Pinterest’s active user base has grown by 111 percent.
• Instagram’s active user base has grown by 64 percent.

These numbers really get me thinking about how I can engage viewers with my photography. I have less than a second to make an impression and then less than 30 seconds to engage my story. This is why previsualization and planning are important when attempting to create a work of art or to engage our intended audience.