Another milestone passed - and a gripe about popular taste

I know for a fact that most readers of my blog don't bother with my Flickr site, despite the handy links off to the right on this page. Why there isn't a shared viewership, I do not know. Perhaps there are two kinds of people - those who like to read (I almost said 'a good read', but that would be immodest) and those who like to look at pictures. And the twain do not mix. I'm one who appreciates both words and pictures, and in this blog like to combine them. 

Well, the news is that the viewings of my pictures on Flickr have just exceeded three million. Here's the proof. Click on it to enlarge.

That's three million since February 2009, I hasten to add! Even so, surely a respectable total. Especially when you consider the vast number of pictures you can see on Flickr, and the hardly less vast number of people posting pictures there. 

I see that it took seven years to garner one million Flickr viewings (in January 2016), then only two more years to increase it to two million (in January 2018), and only one year and eight months to bring the total up to three million (now). So my Flickr site is getting viewed more frequently than it used to be. That's nice, but I rarely get to know who is looking at my shots, or why. Not many people leave a comment, and requests for a licence to use a picture are infrequent. And I don't know how long the picture was studied - was it passed over in a twinkling? Or considered for a minute or more? I'm disturbed that the shots I most like - the ones I'd like to be judged by - are never among the most looked at.  

The screenprint above says I have 32,322 pictures on Flickr, so that's an average of almost 93 viewings per picture. But this is a misleading statistic. Some pictures are tremendously popular, getting looked at thousands of times, while others are almost ignored. 

Being a 'Pro' Flickr user, I get to know how many people have viewed each shot. The five most popular photos are these, all from mid-2017. This is the most popular, with 5,988 viewings:

The next most popular is this one, with 5,973 viewings:

At number three is this shot, with 4,566 viewings:

At number four is another picture of the champion subject, with 4,537 viewings:

And trailing the rest is this, with only 4,174 viewings:

I don't know about you, but I find it weird that these are my five most popular photos on Flickr! 

The one of the cat (it's Poppy, the cat of my friends Jo and Clive) is certainly cute, but not especially worthy as a photo. I wouldn't include it in a portfolio, to show what sort of excellence I can achieve with a camera. 

Even less would I think of wowing a potential big-spending client with those two shots of the bridge. They seem pretty unremarkable to me. Yes, it was an historic bridge, spanning the river Coquet in Northumberland, taking the B6345 from Felton on the north bank to twin village West Thirston on the south bank. But I really can't see why these two shots have bagged the number one and number three spots - unless perhaps there is some local connection that makes people search for pictures of this bridge, and mine are the only shots they can find. Who knows. 

The 'foody' pictures - the oranges and the steak meal - are nice, but again, what's so special about them? (Incidentally, only these two pictures are in my personal 'best shot' collection - not Poppy the cat, nor the bridge) 

I'm glad that some of my pictures command attention, and lots of viewings. But I wish the shots that I'm really proud of got the top five positions, rather than the ones that actually did. 

It all proves something, of course. It proves that 'safe' and unchallenging pictures are the most popular of all. Which suggests that anything truly creative speaks only to a small minority, and can never attract much interest. Which, if I had the soul of a true artist, would be rather discouraging. 

Never mind. On with the next batch of shots, and a new goal of four million viewings!