I once stopped my car (in the middle of the city) to take a photo of an old, bright red truck over the crest of a steep hill. The woman who lived in the house I parked in front of asked if it was a class assignment, because several people had apparently stopped that afternoon to do the same. I thought that more beautiful than the photo itself.

It also tells us sometimes we fail to see the beauty around us.

Or maybe it says that we all see the beauty around us, but we don't notice everyone else seeing it, too. (More than one person stopped, but only two people knew that.)

Why only two? In fact, several of those who stopped to take the picture were also informed by a neighbour (each time a different one) that others had taken the same picture before.

At least if the woman in the house was good at forgetting and asked everyone if it was a class assignment? :-)

In fact? How do you know that?

Does worry me sometimes that people just make those statements that they seemingly must believe but have no basis in reality.

I would assume the _reason_ the picture is being taken is the primary driver of that bias, and in this case, they're both professional photographers with similarly nice equipment and public portfolios that are involved in creating income for them.

Plus, the picture obscures it, but you can see the waves coming for a good distance. You'd expect two drummers to be on beat without much difficulty.

My dad and another photographer took the same picture of the same bird, a crane, at the same time and the same spot. Ibsaw both of them, and they are exacly the same. Both only discovered that after having run into each other again the same day on a different spot. They had quite a few outings together since then.

Fun fact, over a year later my dad and I had almost the same experience at the same spot shooting geese in flight. Judging by the angle, we were maybe just shy of a half a second or so appart. Maybe we should look at EXIF data to be sure!

Seems this stuff happens more often then people think.

I remember being struck by this when Microsoft Research first started releasing their photosynth technology, some of the demos showed raw flickr dumps for certain large cities, and there were massive clusters of photos around the most famous tourist bits. In fact, the technology somewhat relied on this overlap.

Bias as in training? Photographers are trained to pick the most interesting subjects, perspectives, and moments.

Waves like this have a clear peak when they stop rising, but before they fall, so there is a natural moment to click the shutter.