I recently had a photo on Flickr go “viral”1 Maybe not viral in the 2024 understanding of the world, but popular for a few days. For me, and for as little presence that I have on the internet, it felt big. Fun and exciting. It made me happy.
It was also entirely by accident with little effort on my part. It has me having feelings.
This picture, which I took in 2014 and shared on Flickr at the time was not the photo that was popular for a day.2 At least, not exactly.
You see, Flickr has this feature called Explore. Here’s how Flickr themselves explain what Explore is:
Flickr’s Explore page is one of the most beloved features for photographers in the Flickr community. Powered by an algorithm we continue to fine-tune, the page displays a rotating array of about 500 images from Flickr members every day. Explore is a great way to seek inspiration, discover fantastic talent from the community, and connect with photographers who share your interests.
So as you use Flickr – uploading photos, tagging them with keywords, and adding them to community groups – the algorithm picks up on nascent activity and highlights photos on a special page at https://www.flickr.com/explore
If you just upload a photo and don’t engage with others on social/sharing side of things it’s unlikely you’d get a photo picked by the algorithm. That’s one thing I like about Flickr. You get out of it as much as you put into it. Looking at other photos, in Explore, in tag archives, and in groups, and engaging with other folks with likes, comments, and follows is what the site is all about.
An aside on Apple Photos
I’ve been getting back into photography with more gusto in the last few months. It’s a solid creative outlet and a way of dealing with my grief. I bought a new camera for travel and have been taking more opportunities to get away from the screen to take more photos.
I have hit one small snag. The new camera is so new that the RAW files from it are not supported by any of my Apple devices! I have to download the images to my desktop, run them through a converter, and then import them to my Apple Photo library for organizing and editing.3
Every Fall Apple releases new updates to their operating systems with new features. Curious if the new OSes would support more RAW formats, including the format from my new camera, I downloaded the beta version of the upcoming OS for my iPad, iPadOS 18.
Unfortunately as of this writing, iPadOS 18 does not have support for my camera. But, it does have an updated Photos app. So I was playing around with it one evening. There’s a new feature – new to me or new in this upcoming release – where the Photos app will suggest photos from your library that might make a good wallpaper image for your devices.
I thought one of the photos it suggested was rather stunning. I literally scrunched my face at the screen and thought, “Who took that photo? It’s really nice!”.
Oh wait, it was me.
Through some sort of algorithm, Apple Photos picked this photo from my library of over 63,000 images, applied a black-and-white filter, and said, “How about this one?”
I have to fully disclose that while I saw this photo and recognized it as an aesthetically pleasing photo, I didn’t pick it out and make these edits of my own skill. I didn’t spend hours in a photo editor tweaking settings to get just the right contrast in the black and white rendition.
Apple’s algorithm did that work and that made me feel both excited – that technology can do that – and a little sad. I thought to myself, “Why didn’t I see that‽”. Why didn’t I take the time to be selective and edit my photos with more attention?
Back to Flickr
I tweaked the settings a little bit from what the Photos app suggested and uploaded the black and white rendition to Flickr. I shared it in a few groups. Then I went to bed.
The next morning my phone was lit up with notifications. Flickr, through the Explore algorithm, selected my photo for the day. People liked it! Over a hundred and twenty likes. Nearly 4,600 views. The photo is now my second most popular photo by both views and likes. After nearly twenty years uploading and sharing photos. My first Explore.
More thoughts came to my mind. Why wasn’t the original photo interesting enough for Explore? Did I not put as much effort into things in 2014? Why I don’t edit my photos to be more dramatic and interesting and instead very lightly touch them?
I don’t do a lot of color adjustments, gradation or saturation, modifications or spot patching or anything like that. This event has me thinking about the kind of photography I do and how I edit the photos I share.
I seek out the truth in what I saw when out shooting. More so than taking a photo and trying to make it interesting. Maybe that makes me a weaker photographer or a boring photographer, but that’s what I like to do.
This whole ordeal has me asking more questions. Maybe I’m too technical and focused on the wrong things? Maybe I’m a better photographer cause I’m happy with what I take without editing? This is making me feel a little conflicted. Should I spend more time editing to get more emotion out of my photos?
Author, science educator, and YouTuber, Hank Green shared this thought in reflecting upon his work that his company Complexly does in creating educational materials on YouTube. It resonated with my thinking at the time.
“What makes something “interesting” is very different from what makes something true, which is a really powerful force that pulls us away from the truth in society. And I just want to say, that isn’t something that’s evil about people. I think it makes perfect sense, but it is a problem, which is why it’s so cool to get to work on teams that have developed a ton of expertise in how to make true things feel interesting. Trying to make interesting things feel true is a lot easier and a lot worse”
I know I can spend more time, editing my photos and dialing it into very interesting but for some reason that isn’t appealing to me, I’m more interested in trying to take a good photo with the camera. Even if that means it’s unlikely that a future upload will be “Explore-ed”. Does that make my photos more true? Less interesting?
But I’d rather do some light touch up before sharing what I think is closer to the truth – even realizing that all photos are edited and manipulate reality in some fashion. Either by viewpoint, or lens used, or framing, or so on and so forth.
I mean, look there’s tons of great, visually interesting, photos out there. In taking an OK photo and making it really impressive through lots of detailed work. That’s impressive.
I don’t begrudge anybody who does this. In fact, I wish I did more of it because obviously this resonates with people. That’s one thing I try to do through my own work.
As an aside, here’s a recent tutorial that I thought was really great and very helpful in thinking about this from a aesthetic and technical perspective.
I know this is how people edit photos professionally, but as a hobbyist, I don’t know. For me it is more about framing and taking the photos and seeing how they came out than it is trying to take a good or great photo and making it interesting.
Or maybe I’m lazy‽ :p
I haven’t decided what I’ll do. Maybe I’ll try editing a few photos before uploading more than I usually do. Maybe I won’t. But I will keep thinking about this.