Each day, Flickr showcases 500 photographs from among that day’s tens of thousands uploaded. A super-secret algorithm selects them based on their “interestingness” for other Flickr users to explore. Today’s Explored photos are always on this page for your browsing pleasure.
Many people do browse Explore every day and click Like on the photos that grab them. That’s where being Explored gets fun: your email blows up with notifications of all those Likes. Flickr otherwise gives you no heads up that your photo was selected. If you think one of your photos was Explored, the Scout page at the Big Huge Labs site (here) will tell you.
My first Explored photo was a quick image I made to illustrate a blog post. I didn’t arrange the subject especially carefully. I didn’t even bother to remove clutter from the background (such as the bottle of aspirin). But Flickr called it interesting just the same.
I’d been a Flickr user for six years before that image was Explored. But that seemed to open the spigot, so to speak. Seventeen more of my images have been Explored since then. I’m sharing them all here, in chronological order.
I’m happy this one was chosen — I think it’s a wonderful image. This is part of Oldfields, the Lilly family house on the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
After a while I stopped trying to guess how Flickr chooses images for Explore. I just enjoy it when one of my images is chosen. Experience has showed me that only the first, or maybe, maybe, the second, image in your photostream is eligible. This has led me to upload photos in smaller batches, always placing the photo I’m happiest with at the front of the batch. It has somewhat increased my success rate.
Sometimes an image can become un-Explored. It’s because Flickr’s algorithms keep calculating on each image forever, and each day’s Explored images are ranked. If another photo becomes more interesting than yours, it moves your photo down the ranking. If your photo’s rank falls below 500, it falls off that day’s Explore. That’s what happened to both the image above and below. They entered Explore at numbers 498 and 496, respectively. After a few days, other photos somehow became more interesting and replaced them in the rankings. The Big Huge Labs Scout page tells you the rank at which each of your Explored images started, by the way. To see images that fell off Explore, click the Include Dropped link.
I especially like it when my film photographs are Explored. A lot of what makes Explore is heavily Photoshopped native digital imagery. My work is so elemental and minimalist in comparison.
I’m especially amused when a photo of one of my old film cameras gets Explored. I shoot these images for the reviews I write on this blog and don’t mean for them to be especially interesting.
But when I shot that roll of Fuji Velvia 50 slide film, I certainly aimed at interesting! At least interesting to me. I was happy Flickr agreed on this photo.
One of my Explored photos resonated so well with viewers that it racked up a whopping 36,000 views over a few days. I shot this in Garfield Park in Indianapolis. Someone had written these words on these steps and I had the good sense to compose a photo around them.
Once in a while one of my old-camera photos turns out just great. As I’ve written before, I’m not always thrilled with how they turn out, but I use them in my reviews anyway. This was one of those photos, and I was pleased that it was Explored.
I use my point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot S95 primarily for family snapshots, road-trip documentary photos, and other non-artistic work. But it’s a worthwhile camera when I want to do serious work. I’ve made many pleasing images with it. This was one of them, and I’m happy it was Explored.
The afternoon of a challenging day I spooled some Kodak E100G into my Yashica-D and shot the whole roll in my front garden. It was photo therapy. I didn’t take great care in composition but this photo was Explored anyway.
I don’t think this photo from the cattle barn at the Indiana State Fair is all that interesting, but Flickr’s inscrutable algorithms disagreed sharply. I can’t tell whether this photo was Explored despite the light flare, or because of it.
Two images from the same roll of film were Explored. It’s my personal best. The first is above and here is the second.
The more experience I gain as a photographer, the more control I have — I increasingly know what a photo will look like, in my head, from the available light and the settings I chose. But this photo from under the 38th St. bridge at Crown Hill Cemetery turned out far better than I envisioned. I was very happy with Flickr’s Explore algorithms agreed.
This photo from inside the Methodist church in Woodstock, Illinois, was another that fell off Explore after it was added. Too bad.
I didn’t think this photo was anything special at all, but Explore featured it anyway. If you’re ever in Indianapolis, you’ll find this house on Cold Spring Road just west of Michigan Road.
In contrast, I really hoped this photo would be Explored, so much did I like it. But I was in an Explore dry spell. Seven of my 2015 photos were featured, but only two in 2016.
My dry spell correlates to a several-month period when I used Lightroom to upload photos. I recently got frustrated with Lightroom’s maddening interface and quit using it. I returned to uploading photos with Flickr’s Uploadr, and almost immediately one of my photos was Explored. It was this one, from the Olympus µ[mju:] Zoom 140 I reviewed recently.
Did using Lightroom really have anything to do with my Explore dry spell? Who knows. Maybe if my acceptance rate goes up now, I’ll have some evidence. But it doesn’t really matter. It’s just a fun surprise when one of my photos is featured.
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