At photography college, I had an assignment to choose the photo of the month and present it in class, you know, talk about why we chose that particular picture has the best we seen all month. I presented to class the picture below.

Photo Source
Now you might have noticed that there is nothing particularly special about the photo. Its a great photo afcourse, its one of my favourites of all time and thats why I chose it, but there inst really anything to talk about... its a girl with a pink dress in a green forest... and its awsome! (long story short, I failed that assignment).
All the studients that did the assignment had "interesting" photos, like a cat catching a bird, or a boat sinking... you know, photos that had a story. Mine didn´t and thats why I failed.
College was over and this was still one of my favourite photos ever. Not only that, but other people seemed to enjoy it too, even though it had no particular story or motive to it. The photo even has the subject on the middle, which is something any photographer will tell you is something that ins´t appealing... in most cases.
I decided to investigate.

What Makes a Photo Interesting

If you think about it, photography has a form of art is limited... like most forms of art. The boundarie of photography is reality it self. A photographer can´t photograph a dragon or a mermaid, because they don´t exist (for all I know). But a painter, on the other hand, can paint anything, even if it doens´t exist.
Sure, photographeres use lense techniques to make things look bigger or smaller than they actually are, and dont even get me started on what you can do with photoshop. But then again, even with photoshop... you can´t photograph a real dragon, you can just pretend you did.
We say a photo is "interesting" when it illustrates something that we are not familiar with, when it presents something new, when "it tells a story". We don´t see a cat catching a bird everyday, or a boat sinking everyday, and soo these photos are interesting.

Make them Make the Story

The photo above was taken by me. Its what I like to call "a moment photo".
Moment photos aren´t really though out. I was just on the beach, saw pretty colors on the sky and bubbles and the sand and took the shot. Its still a great photo, but it doens´t tell any story. The story is "look at the colors of the sky and the bubbles on the floor... ... ... cool heh?".
I think the aproach of the first picture and this one are similiar, in the sence that both are awsome photos that don´t tell a story. Mine is interesting because is an interesting moment... the first one is interesting... because it makes you (the viewer) make a story.
The first photo only has one theme: contrasting color. Green and Pink are colors that contrast. Because your simple human brain can´t handle colors that contrast, and because the photo is soo simple that there ins´t any other information for your brain to pick, the photograph is automatically interesting. It makes you wonder, it makes you imagine what the hell is going on.
That too me its the magic of photography, taking something simple, and making it almost magical, while still being an art stuck to reality, a simple contrast in color, makes you navigate towards the world of dragons.