If you’d told me sixteen years ago that the photo above that I was about to take of the river through the park in Retford would have been viewed in 2012 by 55 complete strangers from various countries across the world via the internet I’d have thought you were barking.

If you’d then said that views of my photo collection would be nearly totalling 1,000 I’d have probably have just laughed.  Hysterically. Who would want to look at my pictures?

Our connected society allows creativity to be expressed as never before, new music, new books, many gems that might never have seen the light of day are unveiled and even if the audience turns out to be small for someone creating the work for the love of it, as a hobby, then just knowing that someone has appreciated it is an achievement and gives you a warm feeling inside.  I still get a buzz from seeing a spike in my Flickr views or likes on this blog.

In computing’s premillennial days the only people freely sharing things were programmers, now people upload over 72 hours of video to YouTube alone every minute.  And despite some commenters declaration that Flickr is dead in the water because it’s not a social network of the scale of Facebook it still receives thousands of uploads (2,950 in the last minute) – many of which are professionals and many are posted on camera manufacturers or magazine groups where like minded photographers can appreciate and compare each others work.

In this big yet small world there always seems to be an audience for whatever you want to say and whatever you want to show to people – whether it informs, entertains, makes them laugh, cry, scream, think or just go eurgh.