I love Flickr. It’s quite possibly my favourite website. Here’s how deep I’m in there:

• flickr.com is my homepage in multiple browsers on multiple computers.
• I have a pro account with 229 items (still a tiny number by some standards). 
• I run a group called Pigeons & Peacocks, which is mainly work-related but a lot of fun.
• I regularly check my stats to see how many people have viewed my images. 
• It totally makes my day when someone ‘faves’ my work (i.e. marks one of my images as a favourite) or leaves a comment.

But sometimes I’m mystified by the stuff that becomes popular on Flickr.

Flickr has a feature called ‘interestingness‘, a secret algorithm that ranks images from the millions uploaded every day based on (among other factors) the number of times they are viewed, and the number of times they are ‘faved’ or commented on. I browse ‘interesting’ photos a lot, and have unearthed some fantastic images, many of which have made it into my favourites. Today I stumbled upon this one, by a user called ‘Jerri Johnson (So little time, sorry!)’. It irked me a little.

For me, it’s a really phoney image. It started as unremarkable, and by applying some filters and colour tweaks and watermarking in Photoshop it just got gaudy. But some people like this stuff – HDR photography, which deliberately exaggerates colours to an unreal degree, is all the rage at the moment. HDR-type images (or bad approximations of the style) appear regularly in Flickr’s ‘most interesting’ lists. 

Anyway, back to that image – ‘The House of Lifesavers’. It has actually only been viewed 167 times, fewer times than my image of the Bullet girls. However, it has been ‘faved’ 47 times, and has a whole page of comments. Jerri has 881 contacts, and that’s a lot of people being notified when she posts an image, so this isn’t surprising.

But the comments list is a bit suspicious: I can see a dozen people who have commented multiple times, often with invitations to many different groups, with names like ‘The Golden Touch‘. The image has also been invited to some of the same groups multiple times, often by groups that have a policy requiring people who submit images to nominate one or more images by different users.

There’s obviously a bit of sour groups grapes here, since to my knowledge none of my photos has ever made it into the most interesting charts. However it’s clear that some users with a relatively small circle of proactive contacts can push certain images up the interesting scale by effectively fave- and comment-spamming. And I think Flickr’s interestingness algorithm should protect against this, if it doesn’t already. Sure, there’s no accounting for taste, but come on. Come on.

My trip to Cornwall on Dopplr.

Not many of my friends have signed up on Dopplr, the ‘online service for intelligent business travellers’. This is a shame, because I think it’s a great website. Well, it certainly feels like a great website. The one thing Dopplr does really well is convince me that I should spend more time on the site, just doing… something. Only after spending hours exploring am I beginning to get the real value of the application.

Dopplr is beautifully designed, socially networked, functional. It appeals to me on the same level as Facebook, in the way it allows me to organise my travels, experiences and friends. Basically, you add trips, go on them, then write tips in your journal for fellow travellers. Photos you upload to Flickr that you took during the trip are automatically added to the trip page (as above). You can also connect with people travelling to the same places in advance, and then browse their trips and journals. Naturally, it’s better when you share trips with more people.

Personally, I’m not so keen on the ritzy ‘Mr and Mrs Smith‘ hotel recommendations – but then I guess the site is targeted at business. It never felt like a business site until I read the about page info though. I think Dopplr would link up perfectly with Lonely Planet. If you had a site that combined that tripadvisor Facebook app ‘Cities I’ve Visited’ with tips from the LP Thorn Tree forum with geotagged Flickr photos – well that would be a website.

St Stephen's Church, Edinburgh, 1961.

Trafalgar Square, London, 1961.

One-horse dray in Dame St., Dublin, 1961.

I’ve really enjoyed browsing the archives of amateur photographer Charles W. Cushman, who from 1938 until the ’60s toured his native USA and the cities of the world. Cushman worked in business finance and law, but always took his Contax II A camera with him on his travels, documenting the architecture and people he encountered. Indiana University has scanned Cushman’s entire collection and put it online.

Thanks to Include Digital for this one.

The other reason for the switch is that I’m re-designing this website. It’s been over a year, and it needs a freshen up. More of which very soon.

More on Belinda’s Flickr.

A bit more about Pogo:
Pogo used to live in Edinburgh with my friend Colin Perry, contributing to numerous projects in the Analysis Lost stable. He now lives in San Francisco, where, as well as being a photographer, he is also a musician and designer – and just really tech in general. Just as one example, in his spare time he does things like this open source Flash mp3 player and this internet radio player for the Forest Café. If you click through just one link on this post, make it this one, to Pogo’s Panography gallery.