Two Million Views on Flickr: Stories Behind the Photos

Unless somehow Flickr goes offline this week, sometime in the next two days I’ll be hitting the two-million-view mark on my 5-year-old ‘tadnkat’ Flickr account.

I love Flickr.

I’ve been a Flickr user on various ID’s since 2006, and despite the proliferation of trendy image-sharers like Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and the like, Flickr has remained my tried-and-true repository for photos through the years for a multitude of good reasons.   Internet pundits love to bash on Flickr, saying it’s lost its mojo, but there’s still no better place on the Internet for a family guy like me to store & share my photos.   The massive storage, the peerless organization tools, the flexible permissions settings (no, folks, you don’t get to see ALL of my baby butt photos) and – of course – the stats, have made Flickr my photos’ permanent home.

Stories Behind the Photos

I figured as a sort of tribute to the most popular photos I’ve posted, I’d do a little story-behind-the-photo for the top 15 of them.

#15:  15-Month-Old Vocab Update – 5,633 views

I took this video as part of the recording of a milestone – recording how many words my daughter had under her command at the age of 15 months.   She was a wordy little one – already with about 100 works under her belt at this early age.

 

#14: 11|11|11 {My First Flickr Explore!} – 6,088 views

This was my first (and only) induction into the hallowed halls of Flickr Explore.  There are plenty of photos I thought should make it before this one, but alas – folks are finicky about how often they press the “favorite” button in Flickr.   It took this photo of my 10-month-old son as he crawled up on the bed and was looking out the window at the frosty Virginia November morning we had in front of us.

 

#13: 41 Weeks Pregnant | Cannot get much bigger – 6,093 views

This was the last picture I took before officially becoming a daddy.   We were sure my wife couldn’t get any bigger than this (being 11 days overdue on our first-born), and mere minutes after snapping this picture, she started going into labor.

 

#12: 40 Weeks Pregnant | Clever Marketing… – 6,133 views

This was taken with our trusty old Minolta – a nice megazoom camera that served us well until we finally stepped up and got a DSLR.  We were trying like crazy to “walk the baby out” so were taking long walks each day around the neighborhood.

 

#11: WRX + Nokia Lumia 1020 + Joby Gorillapod – 7,137 views

Pining over the fact that I didn’t have a GoPro, I rigged a Gorillapod tripod with the camera grip on my Lumia 1020 and cut this little video together whilst on a nice drive in the WRX on US Highway 58 in lower Virginia.   View count for this one was helped by the fact that a TON of people were searching on Flickr for example videos & photos from the Lumia 1020, trying to see if its video output was up to all of the hype it was getting in the media.

 

#10: 40 Weeks Pregnant | Taking a walk – 7,303 views

For some reason, a LOT of people search for preggo photos on Flickr.  No idea if it’s creeps or other pregnant ladies, but nevertheless – pregnant momma photos are all at the top of my Flickr “most interesting” list.

 

#9: Naked Baby Butt Alert – 8,194 views

We had a great back yard at our house in Garrett Park, Maryland, and our au pair took advantage of it, successfully keeping the kids cool by the removal of clothing.

 

#8: Demonstrating 6X Lossless Digital Zoom – Lumia 1020 – 8,428 views

Taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway, again – view count majorly bolstered by the fact that a ton of Flickr users were searching on the site for “Lumia 1020”, and this was a relatively good demo for how well the 1020 handled lossless digital zoom while recording video.

 

#7: 22 Weeks Pregnant | Sun on the Belly – 8,521 views

One of the first photos uploaded to this Flickr account, this was taken on the Amtrak Coast Starlight, in our train’s sleeper car on the way from LA to Portland, OR.   The Coast Starlight is one of the most beautiful train trips you can take, and is a wonderful alternative to the long I-5 drive.

 

#6: 31 Weeks Pregnant | She ate one of their sandwiches and look what happened!!! – 10,340 views

The right description at the right time, this one owed most of its views to a Reddit posting.

#5: Day 95 | Ahh! Poopoo blowout! – 11,069 views

Parents are the only ones that truly appreciate the phenomenon of the “diaper blowout” – this one absolutely defying any of this planet’s physics, resulting in an explosion that went out the bottom AND out the arm holes too.

 

#4: Day 262 | Naked Baby Butts – 11,084 views

My wife took this one on her old HTC Liberty (still one of the smallest Android handsets ever produced), of our daughter pointing out sagely that her brother “has a naked butt”.  Look before you speak, my dear.  🙂

#3: Cliff Jumping [Nokia Lumia 1020] – 11,124 views

Edited together on Premiere Pro, and taken with a Nokia Lumia 1020.

#2: Pregnant Kat at Sunset – Week 38 – 14,628 views

Far and away my favorite photo of my expecting wife, this was when she was 38 weeks pregnant with Mackenzie.   The lighting was perfect, as the sunset showed through a sprinkler we had going in the back yard, giving an interesting hazy effect.

#1: Land Mine? – 20,758 views

On Halloween 2013, I found this wonderful specimen in the forest behind my house while walking the dog.   It was a terrible affair, resulting in the Fire Dept, the Police, and finally the U.S. Army Bomb Squad from Ft. Belvoir coming to examine it.   I took to reddit to help ID it, and the full blow-by-blow of the evening is archived here.