Got my first ever EXPLORED on Flickr

Congratulations, keep up enjoying the hobby  

 

Explore is a fickle beast, but always nice when it happens. Congratulations, and great image too!

 

Good onya Joe, you deserve it.

 

About time! Good job.

 

Yeah, but it's always fun to say you managed to get into its madness of an algorithm  

 

Wonderful! Congratulations!

 

well done. great photo.

 

Congratulations! It IS a good shot.

I have to confess that I didn't know this was such a big deal... I hadn't realised that it was a Flickr-generated thing and have to say that the one time I was features, some of the subsequent contact was unwelcome.

Here's the one I got in with:

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Stormy Weather by the justified sinner, on Flickr

A fine example of my 20mm f1.7/G1 being used as a snapshot camera, set to iA.

I really didn't like the terms offered by Getty Images, especially given that nearly all my own shots are available for anyone on a CC license (which has brought me some very welcome publicity and inclusion in things as diverse as an iphone app about New York, an article in The Guardian on recession and a guidebook to museums in Oxford!).

Hope Getty works out for you!

 

One of my pictures was on explore a few weeks ago (a Fuji X100 pic). I have to confess that I have no idea what it is exactly! Can someone enlighten me? Does someone choose it or does it depend on the number of clicks it receives?

 

It's a bit mysterious, and I have seen a few theories on how to get an image featured in the Explore page. It seems to be a whole combination of feedback received (favourites worth more than comments, feedback from strangers worth more than contacts, feedback from people who themselves regularly receive a lot of feedback), number of groups it has been submitted to (too many, too few, too many groups with compulsory comment codes), time of day the image was uploaded, etc, etc. It's all related to that weird "interestingness" rating. If you list your own photos by interestingness you'll start to scratch your head as it is only very loosely based on views, comments, favourites, and combinations of the three.

This guy virtually wrote a thesis on it.

As far as I know the only way you know if an image on yours makes it on explore is if someone comments on it using one of the automated codes from Fluidr.com ("congrats on explore", et al). There seems to be a few "professional" explore commenters who go through explore pasting comments and in turn get their own images featured there regularly.

It's just a system, really. I'm sure if someone learned the system they'd get more images featured but to me it sounds like it would become a chore rather than just being a bit of fun.

 

Crikey, that sounds mighty complicated! I've seen people featuring their "explore" galleries and often wondered but then I got a "seen on explore" sticker and after that loads of people looked and commented. I didn't even rate the picture as one of my best! Oh well, at least I've been explored so to speak   It's strange that there's no explanation for it anywhere amongst all the flickr bits and pieces. Thanks Nic.

 

I see what you mean about thesis! Think I better join Flickr Photographer next LOL!

 

That's an outstanding shot there!
Even moreso if you framed it just like that without any cropping or pp leveling adjustments :smile:

 

Very nice! I've never had much luck with explore.