Audience Awareness and Viewer Consideration

I got some sage advice from a trusted writer today that arrested me in my tracks. He caused me to reflect on my own photography. This gentleman wisely told me that people are depressed and they don't want to look at depressing photos. While the captions were appropriate and well written, the viewers may feel worse after viewing them, not something I want to happen since I want this business to be profitable. 
 

I am taking more photos to try to tell a story in one frame. That will require me to think as a writer does when he addresses his readers. Audience awareness should be paramount in the writing process, yet it never dawned on me that I am writing with pictures. Therefore, it becomes incumbent upon me to exercise the same audience consideration when I publish my photos.

When viewing photos, we bring our past experiences to the theater of our minds eye as we interpret them. The environment we live in also influences the way we interpret some photos. For example, in my Gloom series, the lonely stuffed Teddy bear below brought different interpretations. How can that be? It's simple and straightforward! Just look at the picture...right?

Wrong. I see that Teddy bear as a symbol that someone has passed on. That theme is underscored by the title I gave it which I later removed - "One Chance." Someone came over to my house today and I asked this person for their interpretation of that photo: she told me it reminded her of a baby that had been deserted and was all alone. Yet another stated that they felt that it represented abandonment. One photo, 3 interpretations. 

My point is this, photographs can carry meaning. I want to reshape my strategy to illicit positive reaction and response from my viewers. That may be seen as week kneed, however I am largely a guy that has always encouraged people to press on, and that is my true personality. Can that be done with photos that depict dire circumstances? I believe it can. It is my job to find the words to achieve that. This will leave my viewers feeling better after they look at my work, which ought to be my goal in the first place. Perhaps this can be my small way of making the world a better place to live...one viewer at a time. 

I have put two versions of the same photo up. One is depressing, and the other one depicts possible tragedy. That shows we can influence the way our audience sees a photo. What if I had placed a positive phrase on that photo?