Upside Down

Bachelor's Way, Dublin, Ireland, 2007

Any kind of reflection usually makes pictures more interesting. But flipping a picture upside down may also be a good attention-grabber.

First of all, it takes time for your brain to process the image, figure out what’s going on and why things are slightly odd, why we are not fully at ease when looking at the picture. This takes a couple of seconds or so. It’s only then that we start actually discovering things in the image, like the person on the bottom right, or the cute little waves from the falling rain drops.

Although one should always strive to make a picture as easily “decodable” as possible — that is a clear subject, simple, organised structures and colours, all in a somewhat logical composition — doing the exact opposite may also create some interesting pictures. Here’s a thought: The fact that you have to “fight” a bit with the image until you get through it may just be enough to get some extra attention, so that ultimately the viewer spends a bit more time with it to discover what it has to offer, instead of just skipping to the next image…

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