So where are they are all going…..

They are all disappearing fast. Views and figures that is…..The big changes at Flickr have impacted on my views somewhat considerably over the last week or so. Don’t get me wrong here, I am not grumbling at all. It appears to me however that one of the pitfalls of the “all singing, all dancing” Flickr is that large previews of images are actually deterring viewers from clicking the image to view it large. Simply because they don’t have to. Enough detail is shown in the larger preview to allow the viewer a decent view. This makes me think….does this actually matter. Certain Flickr users seem to think so?

I am not in the least bit bothered by this, my regular visitors to my Flickr pages are just that, regular and I appreciate the visits folks I really do. Others may stumble across one of my images by chance and for that I will say thank you too. It’s quite amazing where my views actually come from during a full twenty-four hours. Okay, they have dropped by about 1000 per day (which is about 66% by the way) and I find this a little disappointing. My average per day was around 1500 and they currently stand at 400-500.

Today’s biggest hit is a picture of HMS Belfast on the River Thames. HMS Belfast is a museum ship, which was originally a Royal Navy light cruiser, it is permanently moored in London on the River Thames and operated by the Imperial War Museum. Construction of Belfast, named after the capital city of Northern Ireland and one of ten Town-class cruisers, began in December 1936. She was launched on St Patrick’s Day, 17 March 1938. Commissioned in early August 1939 shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Belfast was initially part of the British naval blockade against Germany. In November 1939 Belfast struck a German mine and spent more than two years undergoing extensive repairs. Returning to action in November 1942 with improved firepower, radar equipment and armour, Belfast was the largest and arguably most powerful cruiser in the Royal Navy at the time. Belfast saw action escorting Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union during 1943, and in December 1943 played an important role in the Battle of North Cape, assisting in the destruction of the German warship Scharnhorst. In June 1944 Belfast took part in Operation Overlord supporting the Normandy landings. In June 1945 Belfast was redeployed to the Far East to join the British Pacific Fleet, arriving shortly before the end of the Second World War. Belfast saw further combat action in 1950–52 during the Korean War and underwent an extensive modernisation between 1956 and 1959. A number of further overseas commissions followed before Belfast entered reserve in 1963.

In 1967, efforts were initiated to avert Belfast’s expected scrapping and preserve her as a museum ship. A joint committee of the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum and the Ministry of Defence was established, and reported in June 1968 that preservation was practical. In 1971 the government decided against preservation, prompting the formation of the private HMS Belfast Trust to campaign for her preservation. The efforts of the Trust were successful, and the government transferred the ship to the Trust in July 1971. Brought to London, she was moored on the River Thames near Tower Bridge in the Pool of London. Opened to the public in October 1971, Belfast became a branch of the Imperial War Museum in 1978. A popular tourist attraction, Belfast receives around a quarter of a million visitors per year.[7] As a branch of a national museum and part of the National Historic Fleet, Core Collection, Belfast is supported by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, by admissions income, and by the museum’s commercial activities.

The image is another one of my Photoshop creations I am afraid to say. It was suitably adjusted to appear very early morning when the shot was actually taken at 09:35. It worked ! Well, I think it did and judging by the comments that came in on Flickr the viewers did too.

So why a sudden interest in this image? Who knows… It may be an article in another blog that has refered to my image, it may be just a link from elsewhere or even a BOT. A little while ago I had two series of images, 35 to be precise, that took between 10-20 hits per day, everyday for one year exactly. Yes…one year to the day they started they then stopped as abruptly as they began. All the images were aircraft related but split in to two sections; one set of 20 were all images of ETIHAD Airlines aircraft and the second set were of QATAR Airways aircraft. The latter of the two always received the least views. I tried in vain to find out the source of the views but to no avail. I wondered if they were being shown at a college or university or something similar but I never found out. Sometimes it can be quite easy to discover what is going on, topical images are easily sourced by a quick google search. Only last week with the anniversary of the Dambusters some of my images were shown in results of searches. This was clearly obvious as the search terms were revealed in my Flickr statistics at the end of the day. A number of months ago when a crane toppled in to the local canal, my images took a large number of hits in the days that followed. At the time, a Google search revealed that the link to my site was the number one hit…thus the reason was explained.

So, has the “Big Flickr change” had an impact on me? I can state quite categorically absolutely not ! I will keep uploading to Flickr for my benefit and should anyone wish to look at my images, then it is for their benefit also. As for the rest, well if you are unhappy then that is for you to come to terms with and to move on. May I thank you for all your comments and input and finally wish you all the best which ever way you go.

Thanks for reading, as always, comments are very welcome.