20,819 flickr views

I’ve been on flickr for 2.5 years now. I wasn’t one of those people who started right when it came out, but I decided to jump on the bandwagon and have loved it ever since. My main use for flickr is hosting my blog images, since when I upload to flickr I can then post them through the url rather than host them myself – so it’s a great space saver. Besides hosting my images, it also allows me share them with tons of people – place them on the map, in groups and comment back and forth. Looking back on my two years of flickr I have quite the range of photos and I could probably clean it up a bit. With 2,246 items (I think I have one video in there) and 20,819 views there’s a lot of history. You can see a preview of what my stream looks like below, or check out the real thing on my flickr page. Wait – you’re on flickr? Add me as a contact! I’d love to see what you are up to.

Now, If you’re not familiar with flickr, you are missing out on a very versatile photo storing and sharing site that is kind of like an archives or library. A lot of their tools help you organize and categorize your photos while also making it easy to share and discuss as well. Think of it like hundreds of little streams all feeding into a river. Once the photos are on flickr they become a part of the larger pool (you can protect them however, as well) and you can view everyone else’s stream and see what they are pouring while they can do the same to you.

Here’s a view of the organization page where you can see I’ve created a set of images that I’ve chosen from all of my photos which I can scroll through at the bottom.

I like to see how flickr ranks my photos in terms of “interestingness.” You can view lots of stats on your images, but this stat I believe comes from a combination of views, favorites, and what flickr deems as, well… interesting. This is also how they find images for their Explore page – where everyone’s photos come together and the best from the day is listed 1 to 500. If you’ve never checked it out, you really should head over there – there are some amazing things on flickr.

I found that I’ve had 9 images “explored” by going over to Big Huge Labs and just entering my flickr id. They have tons of other tools you can use with flickr which allow you to do even more with view and organizing on flickr. I found my best explore listing has been at #54 with this classic image of Matt and Sarah:

I hope you enjoyed my musings on a tool I’m sure you’re all familiar with…. or maybe not? So if you have questions let me know and go check out what kind of photos I’ve been taking for the past few years + start adding your own!