I'd like some way to have a link or dynamic album that always showed the "best of" my images... like a top 50 or something. But, I want to rate these myself, not have the viewers rate them.

Has anyone implemented something like this? how does it look/function - both in the CMS and in the viewer's experience?

The closest thing to this would be the favorites plugin.

You could start with that as a basis. Currently favorites are not "public", so at least that would need to be changed. Also you would probably want to condition the "remove" button so that it did not show except for you.

Thanks, I'll take a look at that.

another way is to use specific tag like "portefolio", "best",...
that is what I did on my website :
I added "portefolio" on my favorite pictures (this album is not displayed in albums page)
I created a page with php code in codeblock to display this album with specific template (masonry).
Maybe, now, it is more easy to do with macro...

Quick idea untried: Technically you could also hide the rating function on the theme for non admins and just do your rating. Then create a dynamic album with a custom sort order based on those ratings.