This morning after a particularly rough struggle to wake up, I cast aside my self-imposed thrift and bought myself a large, three-shot mocha at Starbucks. As I waited for the barista to steam the milk for my drink, I watched people come in and join the line to order as the Isley Brothers’ “Shout” blasted out of the speakers. Regardless of race, age or social class, every single person in the room could be seen tapping their feet or nodding their head along with the music at one point or another. It’s a damn catchy song and some magical distillation of the tempo, rhythm, and call-and-response vocals creates a near-universal hit. It’s the same with Jonny Cash’s version of “Ring of Fire”, with Andrew Wyeth’s painting “Christina’s World”, with Steve McCurry’s “Afgan Girl” National Geographic cover, or any number of artistic works. There are examples of creativity that are almost universally loved by such a wide demographic that the appeal must be something almost inherently human.

But does a person ever know if what they’re creating will be so readily consumed by such a wide audience? Is that certainty limited to more conceptual arts and absent in the documentary arts?

I got started thinking down this twisty road when reviewing my much neglected Flickr account and noticed that my three most viewed photos were each very different and in a certain way – unexpected. The shots that I loved most were never very highly viewed, commented or favorited, yet some shots that did not strike me as particularly interesting were almost instant hits. (All things are relative to the observer, so you should understand that my flickr stream has only been visited about 20,000 times in history…my version of a hit might be much more paltry compared to anyone else.) The point being that I have no firm understanding of what it is that makes people like a particular photo I’ve taken while ignoring any other particular photo. When hunting for something to capture, I very rarely understand how it will translate to another viewer until it sits in front of them.

Perhaps this is a feeling specific to journalistic photography as opposed to painting or studio photography as composition, color and subject are essentially dictated by what lies in front of your lens, but I wonder if others encounter similar uncertainty.

For my next three posts, I’ve decided to try and explore these three different images to see what exactly it is that draws people to them, and how their popularity surprised me. Since I neglected to renew the rediculous “pro” membership fee, Flickr has locked away the majority of my images, leaving only the most recent 200 shots for public viewing – thus I will have to dive into my archives to find the originals that I posted to flickr first.

What is personally more interesting to me is that each of these shots were the result of three different photographic methods. One shot is a throwaway rescued by photoshop, another shot is the best single image from about 40 frames of one subject, and the third is the result of just snapping the shutter at the right time. Each is personally satisfying for a different reason, and I would assume, each also consumed for a different reason.

First up in the next post: Liberty of Vegas.