My first Flickr image with 10k views

My most viewed pic on flickr reached 10, 994 so far. It's also taken with a Fuji, the X Pro 1. Generally I find that I get many more views for a Fuji picture than any other!
 
First of all, congrats - it's a fine shot and well deserving - one to be proud of. I'm curious, though, of your shots that you've put up on Flickr, where would YOU rank this one? And what has been the fate of your very favorite shots that the Explore bots didn't shine their light on?

10,000 views is kind of an interesting metric I'd never thought about before this thread. I knew a few of my Explore shots had gone really viral but never thought about just HOW viral. I just checked them out (Scout: Find your photos in Flickr's Explore pages. is a place you can see all of your Explored shots, including those that had been on it and dropped) and it turns out I've had 4 shots go over 10,000. Two of them were shot with Fujis, one with the RX1, and one with the Nikon DF. They were ALL from 2014 even though I have Explore shots going back to April 2012, which suggests that Flickr or Explore has gotten a lot busier recently or something. I've only had three 2015 shots Explored - two of them were quickly dropped and the other, which is an OK photo but not that great, has almost 9000 views. So I think some of Flickr's more recent business moves must be working for them, just based on traffic...

As with Explore generally, there's no rhyme or reason to the most viewed. My most viewed has over 16,000 and it's a shot I think deserved to be among my most viewed - I have a 20x30 print of it on my wall and wasn't surprised that it got a lot of attention. The other three were all afterthought shots that I didn't even think enough of to process at first but then later decided to and for some reason THOSE were the ones that got the most views... I'll never EVER understand how Explore works but I don't think I've ever had a shot go much over a couple thousand views if it wasn't picked for Explore. And, of course, most of MY favorite shots never got Explored or got much attention at all, so I continue to be rather cynical about the whole Explore phenomenon...

One thing that surprised me was that a couple that were dropped from Explore had far more views than several that are still included in Explore. I always thought that lack of interest is what got them dropped, but evidently there are other criteria???

-Ray
 
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I'm not on Flickr anymore, for obvious reasons but when I was this photo "went viral" for reasons which escaped me. It was never featured, but suddenly one day I started getting multiple hits from all over the Middle East; it was the time of the "Arab Spring" (remember that?) and for a time it was getting over 20k hits A DAY. I was so disturbed by this that I logged a query with Flickr - by that point it was already over 300k hits. All they said in response was "congratulations" o_O The hits kept comin' for a couple of weeks, reaching a ridiculous number - I can't remember now what it was, but it was well over 1m.
18920503.105c090e.1024.jpg

Fantasy Romance Forever Begins Now
par Lightmancer, on ipernity
 
I'm not on Flickr anymore, for obvious reasons but when I was this photo "went viral" for reasons which escaped me. It was never featured, but suddenly one day I started getting multiple hits from all over the Middle East; it was the time of the "Arab Spring" (remember that?) and for a time it was getting over 20k hits A DAY. I was so disturbed by this that I logged a query with Flickr - by that point it was already over 300k hits. All they said in response was "congratulations" o_O The hits kept comin' for a couple of weeks, reaching a ridiculous number - I can't remember now what it was, but it was well over 1m.
Wow, that's really interesting. That's a fine image, but I'm not sure what about it would have gone viral in the Mid-East. And over a MILLION views? Wow!

-Ray
 
It was never featured, but suddenly one day I started getting multiple hits from all over the Middle East

With those kinds of numbers Bill, your image was used somewhere else on the interwebs. Did you ever try a Tineye reverse image search? One day out of the blue, I started getting a lot of hits on an older photo of some penguins I had snapped at the zoo. When I found someone was using it without my permission, I did a small edit. Their web page looked quite tacky shortly thereafter. :ninja:

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Penguins (or how my favorite shot in a long time still didn't save my day)
by Luke, on Flickr
 
Luke, that's brilliant. :cool:

I did use Tineye at the time, and it came up blank. I've had a couple of images "appropriated" from Flickr and I have always gone after the perpetrator with enthusiasm - and success.

I have no idea why it happened with this image - it's okay, quite evocative, but far from my best; I wondered if it had struck a chord for some strange reason, but the numbers were astronomical - just downright weird...
 
I'm not on Flickr anymore, for obvious reasons but when I was this photo "went viral" for reasons which escaped me. It was never featured, but suddenly one day I started getting multiple hits from all over the Middle East; it was the time of the "Arab Spring" (remember that?) and for a time it was getting over 20k hits A DAY. I was so disturbed by this that I logged a query with Flickr - by that point it was already over 300k hits. All they said in response was "congratulations" o_O The hits kept comin' for a couple of weeks, reaching a ridiculous number - I can't remember now what it was, but it was well over 1m.
18920503.105c090e.1024.jpg

Fantasy Romance Forever Begins Now
par Lightmancer, on ipernity
WHOA!
That is crazy. Wonder what other website(s) were pointing people to it?
 
Actually I checked my flickr pics - one over 30000 with the X-E2, two in the range of 11-12k with A7 and DP3M.
I'm happy when I see that a pic goes to Explore, but I never plan to get one there. I'm not in 'You invite me - I'll invite you' and when I see someone has 16k follow and 8k followers I suspect a script.
On another forum someone used scripts to invite members and to rate other pics to use the algorithm of flickr and to get a lot of explored photos.
For example if you're picture is in too much groups the rating should goes down or need a lot favorite-clicks of users. If someone already had a photo in Explore and rated your pic the chance for Explore seems to increase...
 
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Ah...You serious?
Yes, most of those were invitations after it got into Explore. I usually post photos to 8-10 groups.

Explore is a strange thing. I'm sure that there must be people who only look at what's in Explore, and spend their time adding fulsome praise (and I use the word fulsome in its correct sense here). Then photos get popular because they are popular. Some of the stuff in Explore is really pretty average or cliched, so I wonder how much of an accolade it really is. I see some photographers who routinely get tens of thousands of views etc for stuff that I would be ashamed to put before the public eye. That being said, I don't think anybody can resist that thrill of approbation when all the "xxx faved your photo" notifications come along every few minutes.

To answer Ray, I would not put this towards the top of my Flickr gallery. It's a flower. Nice raindrops, acceptably sharp, good colours and pleasant bokeh, but not earth-changing. I have definitely added many others which I think are better. Some of those are in the 1000's of views now (without reaching Explore). Others are languishing in the lower hundreds.
 
Some of the stuff in Explore is really pretty average or cliched, so I wonder how much of an accolade it really is. I see some photographers who routinely get tens of thousands of views etc for stuff that I would be ashamed to put before the public eye.

THIS. So much this. I see the numbers they get, I look at the image, and wonder what in the hell is going on.
 
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