Update:

With 25 million images posted to Flickr every day and the fact that the vast majority of those are added during peak times in the USA and Europe, it is clear that very few images posted during 'marginal' time zones are actually seen. This is about Views not Fav's: if you can't be seen, you can't be appreciated.

Living at GMT +12, If I'm lucky, perhaps 150 people see each of my newly posted images unless I am recognised by the algorithm and feature in Explore.

I am not particularly interested in spending hours and hours of time at the 'wrong' time of the day chasing views from Europe and the USA. The value of Pro membership seems pretty low for me. Virtually none of the 'extra value' benefits for Pro membership is of any use to me: I don't use Adobe, I'm not an amateur , was a photography educator, and don't need lessons, I don't need prints made as I have a high end LF printer.

Therefore, given that Pro membership ONLY serves as a storage platform in my case and all my images are backed up on hard drives and long life BlueRay discs; I am not renewing my Pro membership.

Flickr has stopped me posting any more images until I delete all but 999 images. I have decided to wait and see what images Flickr itself decides to delete when the grace period expires. Will that be based on recency, on Fav's, on Explore or some other basis? I have no idea but I'm interested in finding out. Therefore, in about mid March 2026, I will know and after that I'll try to understand what method Flickr uses to delete images for an account once the user stops paying for a service they get no benefit from.

In the meantime, I'll continue offering my images for friends and on other photography social media sites and will be searching for a more relevant photography site with a better system than Flickr.

I'm a New Zealand based film and digital photographer but one who has lived in a dozen countries.

From an early age I was experimenting with composition and light; I just didn't know it.

One day, the chemist who had just processed my 126 film, asked why I had shot a picture of a hovercraft in the 'diamond' format rather than the usual rectangle. "It just looked right to me" I replied.

I've always been most interested in composition and light/shadow. The camera brands and claims of excellence never called to me as I could see from my teenage years that the best images were created by the most inventive minds and it mattered very little that the photographer used any particular brand of equipment.

Although I studied images to see if I could figure out why they were good or bad, I never tried to copy anyone's style; I just went out and shot a LOT of film and wasn't particularly focused on any specific subject. I always figured that I should learn to shoot any subject well.

From the age of 19, I've worked intermittently in the photographic industry shooting company product images, weddings and events, sports and pretty much whatever I could sell. However, I had also learned that I could make a lot more money in another industry and that working in that industry would free me to shoot anything I wanted to.

I have a restless mind and hate being 'cooped up' so I rarely stay at a job longer than a few years even when I'm really successful. In between jobs, I'd often revert to photography as a temporary living but the financial rewards were never enough to keep me in one place.

Of course, I always shot to please my clients but I prefer to shoot to please myself. If others like what I do; that's a bonus.

Now I'm approaching my twilight years and, with a fridge full of film, my goal is to enjoy life and keep hunting for excellence in photography. I have little to no interest in digital manipulation; if the shot needs 20 hours of work or massive changes to 'look good' it was rubbish to start with and I'd rather just bin it and go back when the light was 'better'.

silvergrainclassics.com/en/2021/02/mike-breen-new-zealand...