Varying Tastes (or... The Oddness of Explore)

An important point for any photographer to remember is that you really can't predict what other people will like. The only thing you have any say in is what you like. I often lose sight of this as I post pictures on Flickr, Etsy, and Zazzle. I post what I like, then I get surprised, and yeah, sometimes hurt, when other people don't share my viewpoint.

I recently discovered a tool that's apparently been around for a long time: Big Huge Labs's Flickr DNA will give you a nice graphical look at what your pictures are doing on Flickr. Which ones are popular, which ones are new, how many, who looks at them, etc. It also tells you which of your pictures have been featured on Explore.

I don't use Explore, so I wasn't even aware that three of my pictures had been there. They don't send you email or give you notice. Your picture just starts getting these odd hits. One picture I wasn't really all that fond of was one of the pictures that had been on Explore. So I asked my wife what was up with that. "I like it!" she told me. Oh...





This recent hike I took is another good example. This morning I checked for comments, and found a whole slew of comments and favorites on Flying in a Blue Dream (the two swimming honu picutre from my previous post.) Sure 'nuff, it was featured on Explore.

The funny thing is, from that whole set my favorite is the Golden Pools vertical panorama. It was technically challenging, done on purpose, and had what I thought was a really neat set of colors as you move from bottom to top. The honu picture was serendipitous! Utterly unplanned! And cropping it was a bit of a nightmare because it wasn't even composed that way on purpose. (I didn't know the honu was there!)

And yet...

I've wondered this before, and wonder about it even more now: As photographers, I think we get our heads wrapped around an idea, and when we're culling the shots we took that day, we're doing it with that idea firmly in mind. If a picture doesn't fit the mental model, it gets chucked even if it's a perfectly good photograph! I know I do it. I'm guessing others do, too.

So what if a bunch of photographers went out on a shoot together, each with their own mental model of what they want from the day's work, and instead of editing their own photographs, they edit someone else's? Ideally, they'd rotate through everyone's shots, including their own, and put together their "take" on the day. At the end, all the photographers give slide shows to each other, pointing out what they did, why they did it, and whose work it was.

I'm wondering if they'd even use the same set of images!

Tom