Popular pictures on flickr

Its now two years and 96,372 views since I opened my flickr account in October 2011. I am still hooked on flickr, not just for being able to post and share my own photographs, but to be able to see great pictures from all around the world for free.

Since my previous annual round up of flickr stories, I have been surveying London's remaining art deco buildings, bit by bit and a number of these photographs have been very popular, attracting many views. A small set that I did on Florin Court near the Barbican has been particularly successful with the picture below receiving 353 views. Florin Court was the location for some of the popular TV series Poirot, based on Agatha Christie's novels. You can read more about Florin Court here.

Florin Court, London

Another popular photo in my London art deco series is the clock that sits proudly above the enhance to Selfridges department store in London's Oxford Street. I took this picture at the end of a long morning of touring north and central London, capturing images of some of the great art deco stations on the Piccadilly Line as well as some of the gems tucked away in the West End. So far, it has received 371 views on flickr. 

Art deco clock, Selfridges, London

The Royal Academy of Art has staged some great exhibitions this year. I especially liked the recent Mexico show. When I went to visit this exhibition, a huge wall hanging sculpture, the work of West African artist, El Anatsui was on display in the front courtyard of the Academy. I took a series of pictures of the sculpture which soon garnered more than 200 flickr views each. Made from aluminium bottle tops, printing plates and roofing sheets, it stopped visitors in their tracks as they came through the entrance to the courtyard.

El Anatsui hanging sculpture, Royal Academy, London

Over the last twelve months, some of my older photographs from Russia and from Odessa in the Ukraine have begun to attract lots of extra views. This has changed the profile of my most popular photographs which for the first year on flickr were dominated by pictures taken in Eritrea - especially in and around Asmara. The three most viewed pictures on my flickr account to date include my interior shot of the beautiful Choral synagogue in St. Petersburg, taken in 2008 is the third most viewed picture with more than 500 views. I remember very well my visit to St. Petersburg and my excitement at walking along the great boulevard - Nevsky Prospekt, stopping for coffee and cakes on my way to the Hermitage.

Choral Synagogue, St. Petersburg

My picture of the young Orthodox Jewish boy and his mother taken in Jerusalem's Shuk Mahane Yehuda in 2010 is my second most viewed photograph, also with over 500 views. It is one of my favourite pictures, captured on one of my many strolls through the Shuk, taking in the sites, sounds, smells and colours of this wonderful place. And look at those pastries too!

Shuk Mahane Yehuda, Jerusalem

The most viewed of my pictures is of the ceiling in the Rishelevskaya Street synagogue in Odessa. The ceiling has a beautiful large scale gold coloured menorah set against a lighter coloured background. It has now amassed an amazing (to me) 950 plus views - although, it should be noted that many other flickr photos have thousands of views

Ceiling of synagogue in Rishelevskaya Street, Odessa

I have been lucky enough to visit several cities in the last twelve months, always with my camera. The sets of pictures from Vienna, Belgrade and Riga have been particularly successful. Some of the Riga pictures were used in Spirti of Progress, the Australian Art Deco and Modernism Society's magazine. One of my favourites from Vienna is below. It is an art nouveau detail from the facade of the Engel Apotheke, in Bognergasse, central Vienna, from 1901.

Engel Apotheke, Vienna

128 of my more than 2,500 photos have now received over 100 views. Several have been favourited by other flickr fans, and three of those most "favourited are below. Being able to "favourite" the pictures of other members is part of the fun of flickr and a great way of finding your way back to pictures often discovered by chance. Now, not far to go to 100,000 views...

Former Tagliero garage, Asmara, Eritrea

Raichle Palace, Subotica, Serbia

Art nouveau building, Sarajevo

You might also like this.

Most popular pictures - top five of last 12 months

As promised here, these are my top five most viewed pictures over the last twelve months in Flickr. Three of the top five are from my wonderful time in Eritrea in 2010, two of which feature modernist/ bauhaus style structures as does the one photo from Israel that has made the top five. 

The most recent of the top five pictures is the view of New York skyscrapers from Central Park, taken earlier this year. It is interesting how some pictures garner many views very quickly (as with the New York shot), whilst others build slowly over time. The Eritrean pictures were picked up by other websites and on-line magazines with links back to my Flickr pages, which no doubt has contributed to their popularity, but they continue to receive regular views.

Bubbling under the top ten are photographs from more recent destinations including Bucharest, Istanbul and the London Olympics, whilst older shots from Armenia, Moscow (in 2008) and Israel still attract regular views. It will be interesting to see what makes next year's top ten! And so, my top five pictures...

Below, the fifth most popular picture in my Flickr photo stream shows an apartment building in Asmara, Eritrea. I like the central windowed tower that houses the staircase, as well as the attempts to "brighten it up" with red and green paint. The luminous advertisement is part of a government sponsored programme to promote contraception! This picture has been viewed 105 times during my first year on Flickr.



Below, the fourth most popular of my Flickr pictures. This beautiful Bauhaus building is located on Lilienblum in Tel Aviv. Probably my most favourite Bauhaus structure in my favourite city, it was once the home of iconic Israeli photographer Avraham Soskin. The architect was Zev Richter and the house was completed in 1933. 106 Flickr views to date.



Below at number three for my first year is a nice shot of some of New York's skyscrapers taken from Central Park. I love the Manhattan skyline and couldn't resist taking this picture through the gap in the trees whilst walking back to my hotel after visiting the Guggenheim Museum. This picture was picked up by a website that caters for skyscraper fanatics, which probably generated the majority of the 108 views it has received to date.



Below, at number two with a magnificent 124 views, is an Eritrean petrol station! No prizes for guessing why I liked this structure with its modernist curves, deco referenced portholes and overall streamlined architectural approach. For a long time, this picture garnered more views than any of my other Flickr shots, probably because it was one of a number of my pictures used by a branch of the UN as part of a recruitment scheme. Thanks so much UN for not bothering to ask my permission! I don't mind at all, but its nice to be asked.



And finally the most viewed of my Flickr photostream pictures is the one below - the Medaber recycling market in Eritrea with a stunning (to me) 155 views - way ahead of anything else in my photosream. This building has a very long history beginning life as a caravanserai but nowadays is a place where Eritrean genius and entrepreneurship is exhibited. Almost anything is recycled here to make a variety of useful items including cutlery, luggage, water pots and carriers and just about anything else you can think of.  The main language of Eritrea is Tirgrinya which is a semitic language. It shares a number of words (or very similar words) with Hebrew, including Medaber. In Hebrew it means "speak", but I am told it is used in Tigrinya as the word for recycle - I can see a link of course!



To see more of my Flickr pictures including from Eritrea, Israel, New York, Russia, Fiji, Australia, Georgia and many other places, look here. Click on any of the above pictures to see a full sized page.

Most popular photos - first 12 months on Flickr!

I discovered Flickr in October last year and and was amazed by the huge range of subjects, groups and information as well as pictures that immediately became available to me. Best of all its absolutely free! Partly due to my obsession with lists and statistics, I added a flag counter fairly early on which allowed me to keep track of where viewers were coming from in addition to the standard information about numbers of views that each picture receives. Nerdy I know. One year on, I would like to share my ten most viewed pictures with blog readers, with just a little information about each one. I will spread the pictures over two posts, this first one showing the 6th-10th most popular, in reverse order of course!

Below - tenth most popular picture with 87 views. This is Asmara in Eritrea. My Eritrean pictures have  proved especially popular with some having been picked up for use in online newspapers and others being used on a website to show more positive sides of Africa. I liked this curved, corner building in downtown Asmara.

Below -  also in Asmara, this beautiful modernist villa is the home of a friend of mine who looks after the synagogue in the city. This picture has received 93 views in the last twelve months and is my ninth most popular photograph on Flickr. I love the receding lines of the upper floor and those of the small windows. The windows to the side of the villa have been covered to provide protection from the extreme heat of an Eritrean summer  and believe me, it gets very hot there!

Below - taken more recently, this Marcel Janco designed modernist house in Bucharest is my eighth

most popular picture having received 95 views. I took this picture during a very memorable morning spent looking at several of Janco's remaining buildings in this much under-rated city. I especially like those lines and the porthole windows. This house located at Boulevard Hristo Botev, 34 was built in 1934. I have written about Janco's work in more detail here.

 

 

Below -  my seventh most viewed picture having received 100 visits. I love this picture taken at Shuk Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem, Israel. I find the shuk extremely inspirational for pictures and also for provoking the imagination due to the diversity of the people, the colours, smells and sounds and not least those fabulous looking pastries that this little lad and his mum are admiring! You can read more about the shuk at a recent post here.

Below - number six in the popularity stakes, this photograph of the cafe in the Cinema Roma in Asmara has received 104 views and is probably my favourite of the pictures I took in the city. The cinema is one of a number of surviving art deco buildings in Asmara and the cafe is a real social hub, serving fantastic Eritrean coffee, alcoholic drinks and some pretty good pastries too! I managed to get a sneaky look in the auditorium too, but no pictures allowed unfortunately. Eritrea has many problems but my lasting memory of my visit is the warm hearted generosity of the people I met there.

These pictures bring back some great travel memories for me - I hope you like them. Look out for numbers 1-5 coming soon. Click on any of the pictures above to view the original.