A weird thing happened to me on Flickr ...

[Matt K.]

As many of you know, I post to Flickr on a somewhat regular basis. Usually my images fetch between 20 to 100 views, some more, some less. So this morning while checking my email, I saw 18 notifications in my inbox, people who added a shot of mine to their "fav" list. First thought was: yahoo must be on the frizz, cause I never ever get that many notifications. So I took a look and it was a shot I posted a couple of days ago of a grain elevator in Dorothy - Alberta. I have posted similar shots before, all with tags, descriptions, geotagging and so on, and never got more than the aforementioned amounts of views. So naturally I was curious why that image got 2300 views by this morning - wanted to find out how one can 'invite' more people to look at ones portfolio, so to speak; a little chimping can go a long way . Nothing I found came close to explaining why all of a sudden that image got so many views. In my opinion, I have much better shots on Flickr than that one, so this really baffled me. So when I got to work I checked the image again: 2500 views ... seemed every time I refreshed the screen there were more views. What gives? No idea how this happened to my mediocre shot. Just did not make sense to me. So, after the view count went over 3000 I decided to do the only thing that could explain it: I opened Flickr without signing in. The I went on the "explore" link, and lo and behold, somewhere deep towards the end my image showed up. That explains it; no wonder I had more exposure that ever before. So it was not on the merit of the shot, but rather a random coincidence. Go figure, way to go to deflate EGO . Anyway, count is nearing 5000, and I see some of the really good shots have views well over 30,000, so I am ways away from where I need to be. Has anyone else had a similar experience?

I need to go and finish my Scotch now, realizing I was a random abnormality ....

[mbrager]

Matt, you are not being fair to your photography skills. It's an excellent shot, not a mediocre one, and is deserving of the exposure. I suggest you post it so we can all see what you are on about.

[Runmonty]

Congrats mate. Some people try all sorts of tricks to make it to "explore". It looks like an excellent photo is the best trick of all.

[Matt K.]

Yer too kind, guys. Thanks ... here is the image on Flickr

[jude01]

That happened to me too, after about 3 years on Flickr I got Explored. Now it happens quite often, but they never pic the best shot out of a batch...always the worst lol. I find it quite annoying to be honest.

[Iguanasan]

I hope you realize that it is on the merit of the shot. Explore is created in two ways. One by their "interestingness" algorithm and the other by people who work at Flickr who find and pick images they like. It's not a completely random process. For more details visit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ironrodart/6144091654

[Matt K.]

I hope you realize that it is on the merit of the shot. Explore is created in two ways. One by their "interestingness" algorithm and the other by people who work at Flickr who find and pick images they like. It's not a completely random process. For more details visit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ironrodart/6144091654

In that case I will take it as a compliment ... thanks Iggy

[ewaizel]

You may find this link interesting:
Scout: Find your photos in Flickr's Explore pages.

You can enter a Flickr user and find when he/she had a picture included in 'Explore'.

Matt, I hope you can find your picture under your name using this.

[ewaizel]

Yep, it worked.
Matt, you can try your user "Photo Kubitza" and you will get exactly this picture listed.