The photo

Every now and then, I take a photo that I just really love.  Almost all the time, what I seem to like, isn't what others seem to like.  I'll get likes and faves on photos that I take that I'm not even sure should see the light of day.

Other times, I'll post a photo that I think is something that everyone should comment on and just ooh and ahh over.  That's the idealistic side of me thinking I'm brilliant when I know for a fact that I'm just an average photographer who every now and then has splashes of brilliance.  And the every now and then should actually read once in a blue moon.

Then, there's this photo.  I took this shot from the Harmony Borax Works in Death Valley last month while on Spring Break.  It was late in the day, the sun was low, so the light was perfect, not too harsh, which is what photographers really want.  I didn't really think much of it as I was probably already concentrated on other shots, some of which I haven't really processed yet.

I posted it to my flicker account and really didn't think anything of it.  I liked the shot in black and white and thought it was a good quality shot.  The next day, when I went back to Flicker, I was amazed at the number of views this photo had and also by a couple of comments.  

Someone, somewhere in cyberspace liked the shot and the shot went viral at least in my small little space of the web.  Not viral in the sense that it got millions of views, but enough that it seemingly took on a life of its own.  If one of my shots gets more than 200 views on Flicker, I figure I've posted a pretty good shot.  In the first 24 hours this shot was up, it had over 3000 views.  People were favoriting it left and right.  For whatever reason, this one seemed to have struck the right chord with a variety of people and once that happened, it got shared around and the shot got more and more views.  I'm sure I could self promote at this point and get more but I don't think that's necessary.

I think what I'd really like is a little more consistency out of my photos.  In the past 5 years, I know I've grown as a photographer.  I look back on my first year of my 365 Project that I did and I'm not sure most of those photos would see the light of day anymore.  But I'm not going to take those down because they help define how I've progressed.  I need those to keep me going.  And so it goes.

Oh yeah.  If you want to see the full size version of this shot, please click here.  There's my self promotion.