My Top 10 Viewed Pictures + Observations

Now that we're in Q4 of 2009, here's an update on the most viewed pictures on my Flickr Photostream and some observations on what might be driving the traffic to these pictures.

Before getting started, you can click on the above link to see my full Photostream or you can click here to see the Top 10 set...or click here to access all my photo sets.

OK, first up, the Top 10...

• Overtaking the #1 position as most looked at is my picture Close Up of the Taj Mahal Detail with 410 views.





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• The #2 most viewed is the Beijing "Birds Nest" Olympic stadium. Another very similar picture I took of the stadium clocks in at #10. If combined, views of these pictures would make the Bird's Nest the #1 viewed picture.


• #3 and #8 are pictures of participants from the 2009 Seattle Gay Pride parade. Below is the one that came in at #3.

#4 is a picture of the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown that I took in Charleston, SC.

• #5, #6 and #9 are pictures of places in Ho Chi Mihn City - the modern skyline, the former Republic of Vietnam presidential residence and US military vehicles.


• #7 is a picture of a "Don't Tread on Me" flag I took in Charleston, SC.

Here are a few observations about the top 10...

• Although it's only been on my Photostream since May, the picture I took of a "Don't Tread On Me" flag in Charleston, SC has shot up and into 7th place with 261 views. While I'm sure there are any number of reasons for this, one that I'm pondering is that this iconic Revolutionary War symbol and saying have been adopted by right wing "tea-baggers" as part of their real?/fake?/ignorant? protest against all things Obama and all things to the left of Glenn Beck. Hence, perhaps there are people out online looking for examples of this symbol.

• Six of my top ten most viewed pictures are from Asia - specifically Vietnam, China and India. So, people are interested in that area of the world it would seem.

• Two of the top ten are from a set of shots I took at the 2009 Seattle Gay Pride Parade. Diane and I went to the parade, I took pictures and posted them later that day. Well, over the next 48 hours I got thousands of views - in fact, my #1 most views in one day occurred as a result of that set with 2,954 views on one single day. The fact that two of these made the overall top ten is just a testament to how many people viewed the pictures.

• The fact that the the Bird's Nest stadium is still clocking in at #2 and #10 on this list a year after the 2008 Games concluded certainly speaks to how popular the Beijing Olympics were and how many people wanted to see a picture of this magnificent structure.

OK, that's it for now. I'll be back right at the end of December to report on a full year 2009 Top 10 Most Viewed list and observations associated with them.

Next Photo Project - Poland

Pictures I took when we visited Poland in 2002 are consistently among the most viewed over on my Flickr Photostream.

However, what's there now are just a few rudimentary scans.

So, for my next photo project, I'll tackle the full set of pictures from that trip - which also included a great stay in Prague.

We took that trip back in the ancient old days before digital SLR cameras - at least ones that regular people could afford - so there'll be a lot of high resolution scanning going on.

I'll post a note when the pictures are up and live.

500+ Views on Photostream Sunday - Why?

Photos on my Flickr Photostream received an all-time-one-day high of 502 views yesterday, April 12...and I can't figure out why.

I think I've taken some great pictures over the years and that I've grouped the 557 I've uploaded so far into sets that make sense. But, most days I get somewhere between 20 and 40 views. Occasionally there will be a spike in views up to 100 or so, only to return back to the normal 20, 30, 40 range within a day.

Yesterday, however the view totals shot way, way up. By using the Flickr stats tool, it appears that people were looking at all kinds of pictures - so no discernible patterns. Pictures I took in China seemed to have a few more views than others, but again, pictures of all different subjects and locations were viewed.

It also looks like most people came to my Photostream through searches on Flickr itself, with a few more coming in via Yahoo! and Google.

Anybody have any theories? Could it be that randomly an abnormally high number of people found my photos on Sunday? Or, could there be a reason? Someone or some group specifically looking at my pictures? Or, looking at subjects that I have well represented?

I welcome any guesses or insights from people who know the ways of search engine or Flickr.