Greatest Hits
When your favorite band or musicians compiles a greatest hits album, it’s usually a collection of their singles and fan favorites. Over a long career, a productive band or artist will have enough singles to make a good greatest hits record. Take Genesis or the Temptations – multi-decade output combined with hit singles makes for a representation of the artists’ career.
Now, a greatest hits album may not include your favorite song from that musical act’s portfolio. For me, “Supper’s Ready” is my go-to Genesis song, but it’s not considered a “greatest hit” on their album. Too long or too weird, I imagine.
How about for visual artistic output? How does one compile a list of “greatest hits” in photography, painting, or video work? Do you pick your favorites, or someone else’s favorites?
Brooks Jensen at LensWork had me thinking about my own work, and what I would consider my best pictures. In fact, I recently submitted a few images to Flickr’s World Photography Day contest. I had to think about what are my best people and nature images, out of all the hundreds and maybe thousands I’ve taken over the years. It was a tough exercise, combing through and wondering, what are my “greatest hits?”
Do I pick the popular images? Or the ones I consider to be my best? If I start picking my favorites, it could be a random picture of one of my kids, one that I hold dearly in my heart.
It’s the same if you’ve ever had to develop a portfolio of images to share with others: your best wedding photographs, or your top artistic representations. How do you pick?
Like musicians, it could be a combination of popularity along with your own personal tastes that make a “greatest hits” collection. If the Rolling Stones don’t want to play a popular song, they leave it off the playlist – no sense in spending effort on a song for which the band has no passion, right?
Looking at photography and our best-of list, we can use the same metric to guide us: what do people like? What do I like, too?
There’s your list.