9

Flickr turned 9 this weekend, and the challenge was to take a picture of "9". I was out of ideas and came up with this at the last moment. I wish I had fancier editing tools, or some way to blur parts of photos or something. I took this with my phone, and I had a decent focus on the 9, but some of the other keys came out sharper than I'd hoped. Oh well. I don't plan on winning any photography contests anytime soon.

I have been on Flickr for about 7 1/2 years. My first upload was August 15, 2005.



From my 2004 trip to Japan and Southeast Asia. Not even a digital photo. I had to scan that baby to get it online :-)

Over the years, I have uploaded over 6300 photos. The majority are from trips. My photos are organized with tags, and the two most common, not entirely surprisingly, are japan and france, with paris and egypt not far behind. Other tags include camping, apartment, puppy, and, somewhat oddly, volleyball.

The photo that has been viewed the most, with over 1,000 views?


Since that same photo is the one that has been favourited the most, which is the second-most favourited photo, with 4 people (rather than 5) calling it a favourite?


I have 108 sets grouped into 19 collections. Some of them are embarrassingly small. Some of them are embarrassingly incomplete. Some of them are either too large or too thorough. Someday I'll go through and compile a "Best Of". Someday I might actually get up-to-date on what's in there. At least, there's always hope.

Some of my favourite photos are from the Inuyama Festival in April 2007. You get the chaos and splendour of the one-day festival that takes over the town, and the magic of the lanterns on the shrines in the evening. It's a mini-Takayama Festival. I also took one of my favourite shots ever that day, far from the madness, noise, and bustle of the festival:



It's far from a perfect shot, but while the sky and water are grey, the walkway along the riverbank is paved and impersonal, and the distant landscape is bleak and industrial, the focus for me is on the ladies picknicking in the foreground, enjoying each others' company and relaxing on the mild, late spring day.