From photographers to viewers – what makes editorial photos interesting?

The licentiate thesis focused on the editorial interestingness of photos. The term editorial interest was coined in the study; it refers to all factors that contribute to making a photograph editorially interesting in professional workflow. The thesis considered the whole process from taking, editing and selecting editorial photos to viewing the final, published photos. Three research questions were set for the study. The first concentrated on the factors that influ-ence the editorial interestingness of photos in the process of their creation and selection. The sec-ond question dealt with the factors, which affect the interestingness of editorial photos according to viewers. These two questions were approached through three case studies. The third research question analyzed what factors of editorial interest are overarching independent of the scenario. The two first cases examined the production perspective of news photos: the first with observa-tions and thematic interviews in a photo agency, the second through a survey integrated in the publishing system of four newspapers. The third case study was conducted as an interestingness evaluation with supporting interviews in a laboratory setting with amateur participants and maga-zine photos as material. All three cases had five factors of editorial interestingness in common; those factors were over-arching independent of test setting, photo genre, and role of evaluator. The factors were aesthetics, affect, novelty-complexity, semantics, and utility. The editorial interestingness of a photo was thus influenced by aesthetic criteria, the ability of the photo to evoke emotion, unexpectedness, con-tent-related criteria, and versatile possibilities of photo use. Viewers considered editorial interestingness to encompass two additional factors: the ability of the photo to attract and hold attention, and self-reference experienced by the viewer. These two were confirmed by literature, which suggested also one additional factor, so called coping potential, i.e. person’s ability to adapt and to cope with a novel, complex view.