What Can A Gorilla Teach Us About Finding Great Photographs?

Your brain is deleting most of what your eyes take in — and it's the real reason you walk past photographs every day. Psychologists call it inattentional blindness, and in the famous "invisible gorilla" experiment (Chabris and Simons, 1999), half the people watching a short film failed to see a gorilla walk through the middle of the frame. You can't cure it. But you can train it to work in your favour. In this video we look at how to stop going out "to take photographs" and instead let the photographs find you: why intention kills seeing, the manhole cover test for training your attention, Joel Meyerowitz's Empire State series, the critique exercise for discovering what your brain deleted from your own pictures, and how Saul Leiter built an aesthetic that did the seeing for him. 📷 The Language of Photography primer: https://dub.sh/tpe-see Watch next: ▸ Saul Leiter and the art of the overlooked:    • What Saul Leiter Knew About Shooting In Ba...   ▸ Ma — what Japanese photographers know about empty space:    • What Do Japanese Photographers Know That W...   Chapters: 00:00 Your Brain Is Sabotaging Your Photography 00:15 Inattentional Blindness: The Invisible Gorilla Experiment 01:45 "I'm Going to Take Photographs" — the Intention That Kills Seeing 02:30 Let the Photographs Find You 03:45 Talent Is a Myth 04:50 Shape, Form, Colour, Texture: Finding What Speaks to You 05:45 The Manhole Cover Test: Train Your Brain to See 07:00 Joel Meyerowitz and the Empire State Series 08:30 Effortless Seeing: Your Brain Working in the Background 09:50 The Critique Exercise: Naming What Your Brain Deleted 11:20 Saul Leiter: Building an Aesthetic That Shapes Your Vision 12:40 Stop Forcing: Let the Place Wash Over You 14:15 Find What Interests You — Everything Else Follows Keywords: inattentional blindness, invisible gorilla experiment, Chabris and Simons, selective attention, psychology of perception, learning to see, photography composition, Joel Meyerowitz, Empire State series, Saul Leiter, street photography, training your eye, how to find photographs, the photographic eye