Interestingness
I’m quite aware that not everyone in the photography world is familiar with Flickr, but it has a little feature called “Explore,” and yes, I’m using that as a noun and not a verb. You see, Flickr determines how interesting a photo is based on “where the clickthroughs are coming from; who comments on it and when; who marks it as a favorite; its tags and many more things which are constantly changing.” That last bit is important, because photos are constantly being added to and dropped from “Explore,” the list of 500 of the most interesting photos on a given day. Sso if I uploaded a photo a year ago and for whatever reason there is some renewed interest in it, it might make that list of most interesting photos from that day today.
Flickr and I differ tremendously on what we think are my most interesting photos. Normally only the account-holder can see their photos ranked by “interestingness,” but a little app called Flickriver allows you to view anyone’s photostream ranked by interestingness, so if you want to see mine, here you go!
What’s interesting (no pun intended!) to me is that I have to go to slot #7 before I’d even find one I’d put in my top twenty! Of course, the flip side is true as well: very few of the ones that would be on my list are anywhere near the top of Flickr’s.
The “interestingness” algorithm can be excused, however, because – let’s face it – it’s just a computer program, much akin to Netflix’s lauded recommendation algorithm. There’s no human element to it. A lot of the photos that are at the top of Flickr’s list for me are there because they stood out as more interesting than the other photos I was posting around the same time (generally when I was a photography noob). Because I get so many more views and comments and favorites than I did when all I ever posted was pictures of me and Mike at Mike’s parties, any photo that rated more interest than just mine and Mike’s immediately stood out. Now, if my average photo gets 100 views and 5 comments and 5 faves, it takes a photo to get something like 1000 views and 50 comments and 50 faves to make its way toward the top of my “most interesting” according to Flickr.
So computers aside, we humans aren’t much better about being able to come to a consensus about what we think is interesting either. Just today, I finished the 365 project for the second time (yeah, there’ll be a post on that tomorrow once I’ve uploaded the shot!) and posted about it on the dpreview.com Pentax forums. I included about 10 shots that I really liked. Almost immediately, one of the photographers there said that they wouldn’t have chosen any of those to post, that they had a completely different list of ones they liked. And while I disagreed with their assessment, I could easily understand how there would never be any consensus about which ten are the best.
How much our individual aesthetics affect the outcome of our art versus our desire to have others appreciate our work will always be an open and - for me anyway – unanswerable question. Who are you trying to please with your art – yourself or your audience? Is photography the kind of art that demands someone view your photo for it to have any worth? And perhaps most scary of all: what if your stuff is only ever interesting to you?
June 30th, 200912:01 pm at
Well, I am glad you posted the link to flickriver because I had not before seen
“Drive until you see the light”. Very cool picture.
I have to say, all of the top ones are very well done, but I do fully understand that you see your own work in a different light. That is all too understandable.
Looking at number 7, it is a very artistic picture and you are right to be proud of it. Number 4 (”That fresh feeling”) has an incredible amount of soul though. To be frank, I often like pictures that are interesting but normal, if that makes sense.
In any case, very well done on 2×365 self portraits, and your blog that has some very interesting insights on techniques with taking pictures and lightroom.
D.