 I mentioned before than
my average photo on Flickr gets 13
views; as
I'm not one of those Flickr users who has 1000 contacts and I don't
submit each photo to 50 groups that seemed appropriate. Why
then, did
one photo I submitted yesterday get 80+ views, several favorites and
more comments than I usually get in a week?
I get that it has
something to do with Flickr's Explore and interestingness but why did
this particular shot get hit while those around it get their normal
number of visits and how did it get picked up in the first
place? The
picture was taken two days ago when I took my wife to the Golden Gate
Cemetery in Colma (how romantic eh?) to help her get her feet wet with
her new camera. This Cemetery is my photographic stomping
ground.
When the light is right it is hard to take a bad shot there.
The
repetition with slight variations lends itself to both wide forced
perspective-like shots and tight telephoto crops equally. It
was my
wife's first visit so we spent a couple of hours there while I
whittered on about composition, quality of light and exposure.
 I have
taken similar shots to the one above before but never
with a
person in the frame - this is a quiet part of the cemetery I usually
have to myself. When the man in the red sweater walked into
shot I did
get a little excited and told my wife to shoot like crazy as it was so
fortuitous that he was wearing such a lively, primary color among the
headstones. I didn't think it was the best shot I have taken
at the
Golden Gate Cemetery though. I don't even think it was the
best shot I
took that day and I'm sure my wife must have captured something similar
due to my instance that she "Zoom over there and keep
shooting." So
how did this shot get singled out for 15 minutes of flickr fame and
glory and why am I unexcited by it?
As
I said, I have taken very similar shots to this before. I
have a very
architectural, graphic (some would argue boringly mathematical)
eye.
My wife sees faces in pieces of wood and rabbits in the clouds - I see
hard patterns and symmetry everywhere. As these compositions
are
obvious to me I allow myself to take them so that I can move past them
and then stretch myself. In this case I much preferred this
shot I
made of the graves with a plane and the moon in a vivid blue sky above
them - it was typical of my style and it said something less obvious to
me about life going on and the mystery of death.
But what do I know? The shot I like has been seen 12
times - the more obvious one, 87. |
