526, 525, 524......

It's clear from the title of this post that I am counting down to something. If I were counting days, 526 would be a lot - more than a year. I am in fact counting down the number of views required for me to reach 100,000 views of my photos on my Flickr photostream.

Flickr is a photo and video sharing site and online community owned by Yahoo. It was started in 2004 by Ludicorp and bought by Yahoo in 2005. In 2011 the site had 51 Million users, and as I write this, Flickr is approaching it's 7 billionth upload. I joined Flickr in May 2008 and currently have 1,178 items on my Flickr photostream.

The site has an interestingness algorithm which ranks one's photos based on a variety of factors - number of views, comments and fav's as well as a range of hidden attributes. Each day the top 500 interesting photos or videos make the Explore pages.

So, you may ask, how long will it take me to accrue the 526 views? On an average day I receive about 70 views. The views often come from internal flickr users or external searchers.

Ironically my most viewed photo is one I took using my cellphone! I took the photo while on a business trip in Uganda. This picture is of my lunch - a whole deep fried Tilapia! This image is viewed on average 10 times a week. Digging a bit deeper into the search term history it seems that most people are looking for a recipe. To help these people out a posted a recipe onto one of my older (now pretty much defunct) blogs. The recipe blog post is also quite popular - over 600 views in 2 years.



Titles can all be deceiving to search engines. The image below must shock some interior design people searching for pictures of purple wallpaper! This Image is viewed on average 8 times per week. The spider is a Flower Crab Spider (Thomisus citrinellus) on a purple daisy.



My most interesting photo according to the Flickr Interestingness Algorithm is also one of my favourite photos I have ever taken. I photographed the bee below in flight using a tripod mounted Canon 50D, with a Canon 100mm macro lens. Focus was achieved manually and photos were shot using a remote switch. I was focussing with my right hand and shooting with my left. The bees were feeding on an aloe. I shot about 700 exposures and ended up with 15 usable shots (i.e. those with good focus, exposure and composition). This photo made it to 12th position on Flickr Explore. Overall the photoshoot has been my most profitable - the photo below is available as a postcard from spressit.com and another from the series won a competition in the South African "Good Taste" Magazine.



Speaking of Flickr Explore. I have 1 photo that has made it to the front page of Explore on the Flickr site. I shot the picture of a Speke's Weaver male is full breeding colours trying to woo a mate at the Nakuru National Park. I was visiting the park with my parents and we had just enjoyed lunch at the Sarova Lion Hill Hotel. For this photo I was using a Canon 50D with a Canon EF 100-400mm lens. The lighting for the shot was near perfect, and a wide aperture created a great soft background.




I could keep going and show you more of my favourite photos and tell you their back stories, although this post is probably already on the long side. If however you would like to see more of my work and also help me to get to 100,000 views why don't you check out some of my photos. Follow the links below to see a variety of my photo collections:

Photos that have made Flickr Explore

White & Yellow Daisy

Masai Mara Safari

Kenya Birds

Ghost in the machine

Ghost in the machine, a photo by jdkvirus on Flickr.

Of late several of my Flickr photos have made it to Flickr's Explore Page. Flickr Explore is a measure of Interestingness - a word coined and copyrighted by Flickr. It's basically a measure of how interesting your photo is in comparison to all the other photos uploaded on Flickr. Each day Explore selects the top 500 interesting Flickr photos for Explore - creating the Top 500 photos for the day.

It's estimated that about 2 million photos are uploaded daily, so making the TOP 500 is quite an achievement. On the useless information front, Flickr currently has over 5.6 billion images in it's database!

To date 33 of my photos have made Explore, and one of the images has made it to the Flickr Explore Front Page. To determine  whether any of your Flickr photos have been in Explore, use the Scout tool at BigHugeLabs.com.

I have been looking critically at some of my photos that have made Explore in an attempt to inform future photographs. There are blogs out there that suggest ways to get your photos into Explore, although in reality you have to start with a good image.

The bulk of my Explore'd shots are macros and most include flowers.

Looking at the non-macro shots, like birds or insects, one of the common denominators seems to be an appealing background.

With this in mind I have specifically shot my latest photo (the one at the top of the page) with what I hope is a visually appealing background! Now the work begins of getting this image noticed with the hope and aim of it being selected for Explore!