Photo by Bill Burke

While we got over 500 hits on the site only 10 votes came it. I was surprised but I do know some people were having problems on some mobile browsers. I am actually going to leave the poll open and see if further analysis is required. But I don’t think that will be the case.

As I suspected, “All of the Above” got the most votes. Which means a good amount of you agree that there is not one most important ingredient to making a great photo. And since that was the purpose of this poll, then the results are inconclusive.

“Emotional Content” got the second place. This topic was also the majority of the commentary. While it is essential in a great photograph, we as a group have found that it is only 20% of the pie.

There was 1 vote for “None of the Above”. That means 10% of you believe that none of the candidates listed would make a great leader. That is just as valid and important to consider too. When I listed “None”, I didn’t mean “Nothing”. So from that we can infer 10% of a great photo could be a nameless magic ingredient. To keep it glass is half full I marked it in the pie chart as “Unknown”.

There are different ways to interpret the data. If we divided the “All of the Above” votes into mini votes for everything, then we would add a .4 % vote for each candidate. Therefore “Emotional Content” would win while other ones like “Timing” would make the scoreboard. Although “Unknown” would still be scoring higher.

But that wasn’t the goal of the poll. We wanted to find out your number 1 ingredient and a vote for “All of the Above” is not 1 ingredient. We could’ve left it off the poll but this gives us useful info too. According to a strong and united 40% of you, a combination of all these things is what makes a great photo.

On the other hand, 60% of you disagree. If we go by the numbers then “Emotional Content” is the leader, but the majority is not united. We cannot ignore the voices for “Mystery”, “Energy”, “Composition”, and the X factor of the “Unknown”.

Could it be impossible to create a formula for a “perfect” photograph? I think we need more data.

This was fun. More polls in the future.

One response to “DATA RESULTS : INCONCLUSIVE”

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