Flickr is no doubt my favorite website. I wasn't really into photography before Flickr, I would take a few pictures but nothing I would consider good. I still wouldn't consider a lot of what I take good, but the community aspects of Flickr have actually boosted my confidence of lot of the pictures I do take. A few of my images have even been selected for blog posts, websites, and tour guides, which for somebody who doesn't even consider herself a photographer, is very flattering. I have also learned a lot from the community. Being a musician, one thing you know is that you can't appreciate music unless you listen to a lot of it, that's why you're forced to go to a lot of performances when you're studying music. The same holds true with anything really, if you are exposed to a lot of it, you start to realize what's good, you strive to improve your own work based on the things you find remarkable in other people's work.
Taking pictures and posting them to Flickr is fun, but I think the thing I love most about participating on Flickr are the sort of unexpected interactions that sometimes happen. Today I was going through my email and noticed new activity on an image that I posted sometime last summer. Alex and I were out geocaching, it was our crazy marathon geocaching day actually. I should've calculated how many miles we walked that day, but it did feel like 10 when it was all done. While I was on the footbridge at Bendemer Park, after we finished up a picnic we had there, I snapped this picture of two kayakers on the Huron River. The funny thing is I remember thinking that, "I hope those kayakers don't think I'm weird for taking their picture", I wasn't even sure if they noticed either, but I liked the shot. Anyway it turns out that one of the kayakers discovered the picture on Flickr and commented on the photo. Thank goodness I now know that they don't think I'm weird!
The other notable "crossing paths" incident also happened last summer during our camping trip to Northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula. One day we went geocaching in Escanaba, Michigan, in the UP, and I wanted to go visit the lighthouse while we were there. I'm a bit of a lighthouse person, or anything having to do with the water, Great Lakes, boats, what have you. Well the lighthouse had a small admission which also included a tour of a nearby local history museum so we went to both. While I was in the museum I snapped my "scary mannequin photo". As you can see it is a bit frightening, it's hard to resist taking a picture of something like that. Well, a few months ago somebody who works at the museum found the image and mentioned that the mannequin did indeed need some help and they will be working on that during the off-season. Of course when I showed the comment to Alex he said, "yeah that's the guy who was working in the lighthouse when we visited." So I actually talked to this person without realizing it.
I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that this isn't a small world that we live in. Things that we do months or years before can connect us in unexpected ways to people we may have never met or maybe haven't met yet. I think this is a good thing! Even the smallest action of taking a picture can be enough to make that connection or to share an experience with another person, even if it's for a short period of time.
