Images by John 'K'

One of the things I love about photo hosting sites like Flickr is the opportunity to have your photography seen by others – to share your vision of the world and its beauty with other people in the hope that people get the chance to see things they might otherwise not see, and also to inspire others to look a bit more closely at the things around them.

With that in mind, while some people on Flickr hate it when others take their images and post them on blogs, I am honored to have my work chosen by someone else to illustrate a theme or help make a point (so long as the blogger links back to my original post on Flickr). My view of my photography is that it’s a hobby that brings me pleasure, and if that pleasure can be shared with others who also get enjoyment from my images, then that’s just a big bonus – the cherry on top as it were.

I’ve had my work used by a number of non profit groups, many with themes close to my heart for a variety of reasons – if my hobby can help them, I’m more than happy to play a small part. It’s rewarding and gratifying to have my images used in this way, but at the end of the day I know they’re looking to do something on a low budget and the fact that I’m happy to have them use my images or nothing more than a name credit probably plays a large part in their selection criteria.

Where I start to feel a little humbled though (because I don’t think my stuff is that good) is where people have included one of my photos in a “best of” blog collection. Typically the only way I see this has happened is when all of a sudden my Flickr usage stats show an image I posted some time ago has started to attract fresh attention. Often I’ll look at what the blogger has chosen and think “but I have better examples of this theme than the shot you chose”, but clearly they chose what they did for a reason, so who am I to argue? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder after all.

A few examples of where this has happened can be found at the following pages…

• 34 Superb Wild Bird Photos to Inspire and Fascinate You
• We Love M&M’s – 14 Yummy Pictures
• 17 Awesome Squirrel Pictures
• 40 Beautiful Flower Pictures
• 10 Great Shots With the Nikon D5000

Every time I see one of these kinds of posts use one of my shots I find myself thinking “with the huge number of excellent shots out there from so many talented photographers, why on earth are you picking one of my images?”, but then I step back and realise that I’ve been picked by someone else with the same eye for things that I have (as I won’t share a shot if I don’t like it myself), and the more this happens the more I feel that I’m not so different from the other people out there after all…