Okay, Cee–this is HARD for me!! I have flipped, flopped, reversed and stood these images on their heads and for every one, I know which version I prefer, but my mind just doesn’t work in the analytical way yours does. I am totally inductive, not deductive, but nonetheless I tried to figure out the why of why one photo works better than the other, so let’s go and see how I do!!!

In this photo, I definitely like the one where the man with the red shirt is to left of the burros. The eye is attracted to his red shirt, then sweeps to the right, as is a natural motion in reading. With the man on the right, the sweep of the eyes from right to left feels unnatural, and a bit like looking at the photo backwards.

The only way this photo looks good it with the two trees coming from the left and the bottom. I think it is because, as in the last photos, the eyes want to go from the left to the right. Flipping it vertically made me dizzy… so no go with that perspective.

With this goofy fella, we want to see the most interesting part first–which is this intriguing little crystal coming out of his head. It also seems more normal to start at the top and slide out eyes down the branch in a natural left to right movement. This is a photo of the larval stage of a hummingbird moth.

These pelicans just have to be swimming from left to right or they look to me like they are swimming backwards. Isn’t the green wig on the fron guy fetching?

Same with this cat. In the first photo, he looks like he is gazing backwards at where he has just been–whereas in the second, he looks like he’s gazing out at a scene before him.

Having seen this spider spin her web for weeks, I know logically that she spins it in front of her, backing away from it. The spider needs to be the first thing we see, and her web needs to be in front of her. Flipping the image gives the web itself primary importance and is disturbing to my eye.

Here I much prefer the first version to the second. We are first drawn to the bright colors of the child’s clothing and there is then a natural “S” movement of the eyes up the baby’s legs to his torso in a left to right movement and then another curve back slightly left and up to the mother’s face to the right. I love the communication between the mother and child in this shot.
So, I think I just made the same argument over and over in this exercise, but at least I did the assignment!!!


























