Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Persistent mystery

Handout man / Emma's Dilemma
"Handout man, Manhattan," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

I'm not much of a numbers' man, but occasionally I like to look at Flickr's  stat summaries for photos I've posted. Some surprise me. The picture above, for instance, has been viewed 26,016 times.

That's a lot of views.

I don't get it. I understand how this one, received 12,530 views:

blonde
"Drunk blonde with Siamese twins, the Mermaid Parade," Tim Connor, All rights reserved

But the kid handing out Emma's Dilemma coupons on Park Ave. South I don't get.  I shot this picture  in 2007. It ended up in a show called " 'New' New Yorkers" at Judson Church in 2009. I stopped trying to photograph street handout people soon afterward because most of my potential subjects declined -- very nervously -- to be shot. They were afraid I had something to do with Immigration.

So how does this picture draw 26,016 people to come to my modest little blog page? What's your theory?

My submissions to " 'New' New Yorkers" are here. 


2 comments:

Chris Bonney 2 said...

If your photo gets picked up by Flickr's Explore feature, the numbers go crazy, well into the thousands. Sometimes it's just the right search term. That little 40-second video--"40 seconds of Zen"--I made the day we went to Dead Horse Bay has been seen by more than 56,000 people. I'm convinced it's because of the word "zen" in the title.

Tim Connor said...

Ah ha!! I knew someone would know. Thank you, Chris. BTW, does anybody else get depressed by the suspicion that our entire popular culture seems to be run, not by people, but by algorithims?