10 years, 2M views on Flickr

My photos on flickr racked up their 2 millionth view yesterday.  I don't know what picture got the magic 2 millionth view; I can say Fire was the mosted viewed image that day.

I've been on flickr since June of 2005, so that's just over 10 years now.  I hit 1 million views back in 2013 and I feel about the same with 2 million views.  Still 10 years with flickr deserves something  so here are my top photos in Explore by year going back to 2005. Explore is flickr's top 500 photos for the day the photo was uploaded.

Seattle Great Wheel : 2015 (so far) #205 in Explore. Only shot on the list taken with my new Pentax K3ii
Rob's Return: 2014, #41 I've previously blogged about Rob's Return, no surprise that it's on this list.
Giant Head, the Bow: 2013 #101 One of Calgary's most iconic public art installations in front of one of our most iconic building. With a ranking of 101 this tied with Jackrabbit Snow for 2014's highest rank in Explore.  I went with Giant Head as it as more than double the views.
London Eye Pod, 2012 #14 Taken from the top of the London Eye, on our trip to Europe to celebrate our 20th Anniversary. Flickr currently ranks this as my most interesting picture.
Green Points: 2011 #350 Taken on our trip up BC's Sunset Coast.  The only photo on this list taken with a Lensbaby. The second shot from BC to make this list.
Calgary Tower in Fog: 2010 #51 We don't get much fog in Calgary but when we do it can lead to some cool photos.
Action in Lane 20: 2009 #50 The Calgary Flickr Meet Up Group rented a bowling alley and I got this cool shot of the bright ball and pins falling. The only indoor shot to make the list.
Sky Canola: 2008 #350 Taken with my point and shoot while biking.  I didn't even stop to take this shot, just pointed the camera at the field and kept going. Flickr ranks this as my second most interesting shot of all time.
First Macro Experiment: 2007 #82 Flowers in the Quebec City Farmer's market.  I had just gotten my first SRL (Pentax's K10d).  I had gone to the market the day before, but went back with a macro lens to see if I could get better results - looks like I did :)
Queen of the Ducks: 2006 #107 Another Flickr Meetup group shot.  Fellow flickerite Lisataime brought seed to attract the ducks and I got in on the actions.
Street Humor: 2005 #97 On 17th ave.  I had to pay him to get this shot. Again taken while out the the Calgary Flickr Meet Up Group.  I do miss that group.  They had a huge impact on my photography.

This post made possible by Flickr Scout.

- Peace

First Three Interesting Photos of 2015

I have a simple Groovy script that reads the flickr search api and tells me when photos break into my Top 500 in terms of interestingness.   (They really should update that page, there is no way it's a new feature.)

At the start of each year, I have this fear that I won't shoot anything interesting this year.  So it was relief when I ran the script today and three pictures from 2015 had made the top 500.

Spray Lakes by Moonlight Drove up to the spray lakes to take a shot of the Lights of Canmore, while there I spun around and took a shot of the north end of the Spray Lakes Reservoir.  It was a full moon or close to it, but the moon was behind the misty clouds that acted like a big diffuser.  This was an 8 second tripod exposure at 200 ISO. Had been warm that day, but temperature had dropped to -15 or so and the ice was cracking loudly.  Freaky.
Lights of Canmore The reason we had driven up the Spray Lakes was for this view.  Had shot something similar, free hand with my point & shoot as a 100km shot post Goat Creek in 2013. Knew it would be better with the K5-IIs and a tripod. Didn't know how the fact that it was snowing in Canmore would affect the shot, would we be able to see the town at all?  Still you don't know if you don't try.  Glad we did, the snow above the town created a wonderful glow.
Mixed Space A shot of the underside of Macleod Trail where it crosses Fish Creek Park. Used a couple of different filters to contract the natural and the concrete in the space.

Top Twelve Photos from 2014

My annual roundup of the top twelve shots from the previous year, as ranked by Flickr Interestingness

	Rob's Return: Currently ranked #3 shot of all time.  London Eye Pod is #1, Sky Canola  is #2. Shot at Rosen Lake in Aug. Only shot from the top 12 to get it's own blog post.
	Taken just mintures after Rob's Return, Water Radish ranks #6 on my all time list. The only other picture from 2014 to break the top 10 of my +7000 pictures on flickr
	On Lake Minnewanka: Taken in March in Banff. My top 3 shots are all lake shots. Hmmm
	Shale @ 1500km:  as the title suggests, taken at the 1500km mark for biking this year. Was coming down a logging road near lake Rosen. Same weekend as #1 & #2. It was a good weekend.
	Tram Into Rainbow Mist:  Jasper Sky Tram  shot during an inversion.  Clear sky above us, clouds below created the rainbow effect.
	Heading Down at 700km: taken while descending from the Highwood Pass just before it opened for traffic in May.  My top #6 were all taken in mountain regions.   Flickr also seems to like clouds, mountains and roads.
	Rosen Lake Morning (Ultra Wide): Taken in the same batch as #1 & #2, and the same weekend as #4.  Like I said good weekend.  Also, mountains, lake & clouds.
	Sea of Clouds: Clouds looking like a large lake.  Mountains in the distance.  How could it not be on the list? Shot in Jasper during the same inversion as Tram into Rainbow Mist.
	Stand Out: Siwash Rock taken while biking  the Stanley Park Seawall in Vancouver.  Reminds me of the Hopewell Flower Pots in NB. Clouds, mountains, path: check!
	Millrise Inukshuk: a neighbour created this Inukshuk from the compacted ice that he scraped off his sidewalk. Given it was taken in Calgary, it breaks the mountain region streak.  Still in tone it fits with many of the images to make the list. The ice/water/water vapour (clouds) theme holds. My only Calgary shot to make the list this year.
	Waiting to Cross: a grizzly bear  waiting to cross the Icefields Parkway.  Technically a horrible shot.  I was getting dark and the settings were from an hour or so ago.  Looked black on the camera, but it's amazing what software can do. Tonally it breaks the 2014 theme, but it has a grizzly!  It was taken in the mountains. so that holds.
	Maligne Lake & Mt Charlton:  from our visit to Jasper.  Also a good weekend.  As it produced four of the top twelve shots. Clearly a return to the lake & mountains theme.

My Most Interesting and Viewed Photo on Flickr

Converge (my faith community) went out to Rosen Lake for a weekend retreat.  I left early morning Sat. and stopped to take some shots of mist rising in the foothills of southern Alberta .  Was happy with the results so made a mental note to get up early on Sunday and take pictures of Rosen Lake.

While shooting the lake, noticed Rob out for an early morning fishing expedition in his canoe, and took some shots of him.  Liked the results, even mentioned to Rob and Stacy (our hosts) that there might be something there worth doing a print of.

Posted three shots of Rob in the canoe to flickr Tuesday night.  Got a couple of responses from my contacts, which were appreciated and went to bed.

Woke up Wed morning to find that the shot Rob's Return was now my most viewed photo in my nine years of posting to flickr.  The previous #1 Under Goat Creek has 9,762 views.  Most of that 9700 was thanks to weeks of it bouncing around on various tumbler blogs.    I was thinking I should blog it when it passed the 10k mark as it would be my first picture to do so.

In less than 48 hours Rob's Return now has over 31k views.  It reached 28 on flickr's leader board of the top 500 pictures of the day.  Seeing the quality of the other pictures in the list is quite humbling.

Rob's Return was also my most interesting picture of all time, when I checked the stats last night. However 2008's Sky Canola is back on top this morning.  Flickr's interestingness algorithm is a strange beast.

I don't know what all this means, but I enjoy it more than I like to admit.

- Peace

One of My Best Shots of 2013

Calgary Folk Music Festival 2014 is this week; so I thought I'd see what was left of my shots from the CFMF 2013. Posted this one of Karin Bergquist of Over the Rhine & Richard Flohil who is a Canadian Music Industry guru.

The photo has taken off, in just two days it's my 7th most viewed photo of all time.

It would have made my top 12 list for 2013 if I had posted before I had done the list.  Thought it deserved a post.

- Peace

First Explored Photo of 2014

Millrise Inukshuk is the first of my 2014 photos to make Flickr's explore, if only briefly.

It's also the 6th photo to be added to the Most Interesting of 2014 set.  That means I have enough photos to start using the set to display in the right hand side of the blog.

- Peace

One Million Views on Flickr

Hit the one million views mark on my flickr account yesterday.  Don't know what it means.

I remember 10cent passing that mark years ago.

D'Arcy Norman hit the 2m mark before giving up flickr, and then coming back.

Don't know what view put me over, but my most viewed picture for the day was Question Mark, racking up 17 views for the day.

So I hit the million views with a big question mark.  That fits :)

- Peace
Dave

My First Intersting Shots of 2013

Got a couple of shots of one of the neighbourhood Jackrabbits. Kim loves them so I knew she'd be happy to see them. Folks on flickr also liked them so they are the first two shots in my Most Interesting of 2013 set.

Feels a bit strange as I'm still posting shots from 2012 and my Most Interesting of 2012 set is still growing.

I have maintained Most Interesting sets since I started on flickr in 2005.

- Peace

My Top 6 London Shots + 1

I took over 2500 shots while in the UK.  Of those I published 185 to Flickr.  Of those 18 made it to my Most Interesting of 2012 set.  Here are the top 6 shots as ranked by Flickr:

#1		2nd only to 2008's Sky Canola this shot just took off. 1266 views, 76 favorites and 49 comments. I knew it was a cool shot but wasn't expecting that much of a response. It was the perfect spot for my Sigma 8-16mm Ultrawide lens.
#2		#31 on the all time list, the London Eye does well again with my Ultrawide lens. Taken with my tripod on the Westminster bridge.
#3		The Gothic Ceiling of the St Mary Aldermary Church was listed as one of the reasons to visit it when I googled the church while trying to locate Moot. Moot is as cool as their ceiling. Even if they did mock me for drinking Strongbow. Not a real cider apparently.
#4		A weak shot technically, I think this shot works as the British Police are famous for not carrying guns. The fact that this armed Bobby is a woman just adds to the dissonance.
#5		With 7 favorites and 0 comments I have no idea why people like this shot. I'm guessing the curved architecture, the clouds and the river.
#6		Shot from our tour bus, this is one of those times when things come together.  Cool shiny Austin Martin on a mostly monochromatic background.
+1		Sometimes I get very excited about a shot and post it to flickr and the silence is deafening.  I have a whole collection of these shots called: Personal Favs. I just love this handheld, Lensbaby night shot of a drenched Piccadilly Circus.  Flickr was less impressed.

So that's it for London. I've started posting pictures from Paris.

- Peace

First Interesting Pic of 2010

Jim of Claymore is my first "Interesting Pic" of 2010. That means it's broken into my top 200 pictures of the over 3400 pics I've posted since starting with flickr in 2005.

- Peace

It's been a good year for Photography

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
There are currently 107 photos in my Most Interesting of 2009 set. These are all pics that have made the top 200 out of all my photos on flickr. Flickr ranks photos by what they call interestingness. By comparison my 2008 set had only 50.

- Peace

I can't predict Flickr

I like this picture, but I never would have guessed it would be the most popular picture from our trip to NS, PEI and NB. That's one of the pleasures of flickr, random pictures getting a bigger reaction that you would have guessed.

The other thing I thought was odd: no one on flickr asked about where/how the picture was taken. Strange.

- Peace

Translation for Comments on Flickr

Auto translation is something that has seen a great deal of hype ever sinceBabel Fish came out in the mid 90s. It's not yet good enough to do large sections of text. Though it can give you the feel for what an article in another language is saying. I'm not sure how many people use Google's Chat translation. Google chat is mostly tied to gmail, how often do you email with people in different languages?

However flickr is unique in that it's a community based on images, you can appreciate images in any language, so that brings people together. We leave short comments for one another. Short enough that translation software would really help. If I'm commenting on someone's photo and their default language isn't that same as mine, it would be cool to have flickr offer to translate the comment. After all Yahoo owns both Flickr and Babel Fish.

- Peace

First Interesting Picture of 2009

Flickr Ranks pictures interestingness. When a picture of mine breaks into my all time top 200 I add it to a set. The Caution Bikes in Frost picture starts off the 2009 set. The 2008 set has 47 pictures, so it would make for better viewing at the moment.