Favourites

My photography skills often earn me compliments. Sometimes out of kindness, sometimes out of pity, sometime out of honest admiration. I’m more certain of the first two than the last one. I often do myself down. At least a little. I’m undeserving of many of the compliments, in my own mind at least. It all depends on what basis, what comparison, the compliment is made.

I host my photos on Flickr. I may have mentioned this previously. Flickr is a great place to host your photos. It’s also a great community. There are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of really talented photographers on Flickr. I browse through other peoples uploads regularly, add new contacts, mark great photos as favourites and enter little competitions.

I can measure my participation with the statistics. I’ll normally mention the ones related to my photos. For the record, I have 7,761 photographs in 427 sets, organised in 15 collections, with a grand total of 207,240 views. My most viewed photo, Saxy Girl, accounts for 5,918 of those views. People have ‘faved’ my photos a total of 368 times, and left 467 comments, whilst 701 of my photos have never had so much as a single view.

But I was talking about other photographers and their photos. I have stats for them too. I have created (or curated) 13 Galleries consisting of 206 fantastic shots. I have 185 contacts and have joined 116 groups. My participation levels vary from zero to regular. And I have favourited a total of 2,000 photos precisely. Sometimes I favourite contacts photos that I like, or photos that I find in Explore, or photos that I just happen to stumble across. I regularly use the thoroughly excellent Fluidr to browse.

The slideshow below contains the full catalogue of other peoples photos that I have marked as favourites. I find them inspiring. They give me ideas, motivate me and keep me aiming higher. On the other hand, they also remind me of my place as a photographer in the grand scheme of things. Should you ever notice me respond to a compliment with a touch of disbelief or offer a seemingly overly modest response – well, these are the photos that are responsible. As a photographer, I still have a mighty long way to go.

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