The People’s Vote

Data is an interesting thing, and not something one normally associates with artistic endeavours. Yet, just as we get feedback on our work from tutors, I decided to ask some of my photographically-inclined colleagues to pick a ‘top ten’ from a selection of thirty images for the upcoming installation.

One of the main surprises was that an image that I hadn’t really considered a ‘top possibility’ was almost unanimously ranked first – in the header above. It was closely followed by the ‘fallen tree’ – although Ingrid admitted that she didn’t vote for that as she knew it was so far the ‘key’ image in marketing materials 🙂

And one image that has not featured in my WIP or the book was the third most liked:

Many of the images in the ‘middle range’ featured in my last WIP, which is reassuring, although now they carry Khmer text.

Perhaps disappointingly , an image that I have always found interesting basically was ranked nowhere … I think in retrospect I was carried away with the quote?

Here are the results:

I do not intend to slavishly follow this list, but it is certainly a set of helpful data points, as one of the intents of the installation is to make people stop and think – anything that can help get the strongest possible ‘stopping factor’ has to be useful.

What was also interesting was that some people commented that they had tried to judge how photograph and caption worked, some said they couldn’t see a connection, and others that they simply chose based on the photograph. I quite like this mix, although i will also go back and talk to some of the respondents to dig  bit deeper.

The full range of images is here.

I still need to do some work on layout and spacing, of course.