Left to Right or Right to Left?

Just out of interest, and due to the discussion in this thread, which of these photos looks 'right' to you?

1.


2.


I've seen it the 'correct' way round a thousand times, so the other way looks weird to me, but I wonder if that's just because I know how it was in real life or whether there's something more fundamental going on with the way that we read pictures.

Ta,
Dan

#2 for me. I can't tell you why though.

2 for me as well and I too could not say why - mind you I am looking at the image I prefer and not to see which way round I think it should be.

Think on second look I prefer the second because in the first you go into the shot and are stopped by the tree in the second you pass the tree and carry on into the shot.

Does anyone know what I am talking about 'cause I'm not too sure I do.

Daniel. For what it is worth, I was told by a well respected judge that subconsiously, we scan pictures from left to right as we do when reading. We should try to put the main point of focus on the left hand side. We then look at the rest of the photo as we scan through. If we put the main focus on the right then we scan over the left side of the picture, being drawn to the point of focus. How valid this all is, I am not sure. I actually prefer the 2nd one. How this affects those who read from right to left, I don't know.

#1 for me Daniel 'cos its the same with Mike's wheat field photo, my eye is trained for left to right and with this shot my eye naturally wanders in that direction takin' in all parts of the photo and the tree then contains my eye. Its not a hard and fast rule though.

#2 does look weird to me in this respect too.

This is only my opinion, although GOD did agree with me.

I prefer No 1, and am disappointed that we don't all feel the same. It means that there is no natural law that we are all obeying.

G

Both well over exposed lacks definition colour etc. sorry, but you will save ink if you print them out.

Well, although we were not asked about the merits of the image as you have brought it up I like the overexposure and if I had been taking it may well have done the same, would be interested to know it the heavy white influence was an artistic decision.

I agree with Pauly. Of course, I only saw no. 2 AFTER no. 1, so in pure scientific terms this is probably not a good test. What we need is a completely new set of participants viewing them in the other order - and probably with a low-key version for further balance!

(Perhaps there is no "right"!?)

Tony

Number 1 for me without a doubt, though TonyM may well have a point there.

I go for No1 and follow the left to right camp

When I look at the first shot my eyes automatically look to the left of the image because my brain is conditioned to do that, my eyes then wander to the right and settle on the tree before scanning around again. With the second shot my eyes go to the left of the page and are held there by the dominant tree, so unless you intend to market this to the Chinese you may as well crop the right hand side of the image off.

Thanks for the comments so far, I voted 'Neither', just so I could see the results without influencing them.


This did occur to me, so I had to decide which order to put them in knowing that it might affect the result. I wonder...




Well, I've sold 7 prints and countless greetings cards of this one, so each to their own I suppose. I have to say though that for speed I used the 'over-sharpened-for-print' greetings card sized image to illustrate this, so the colours are a bit off. The print has a little more subtlety to it.

The over-exposure was deliberate, in that I prefered this exposure of the three bracketed ones I took on slide film back in 2003. It was taken at midday, and the sky was bright. The tree is actually well exposed in the original, but the sky and snow are over-exposed in places. I then exagerated that after scanning to get the clean look.

I find it fascinating that something that looks so right for me one way and so wrong the other, can be seen as completely the opposite by some of you. I'm certain that I feel that way as that's the way that I see this photo all the time, but I wonder if I'd look at it differently if I had never seen it before.


Let's hope not.

Dan

P.S. Spider, remind me to come back to your comment later.

Hey!! Who else voted 'neither'?!?

Dan

I imagine this looks nice on a christmas card etc and good room for text so probobly a good stock photo etc I like it

It's all in the eye of the beholder