pecunium

Explore, at flickr, is a sport of delayed gratification. Some while after one posts something, it rises out of the crowd (how the thing is determined, I've no idea) and enters the ranks of Explore.

Some keep rising, some fall. Today the second of my picutres to make it appeared. For a few hours this photo was ranked in the top 500 for August 14th, 2008.

In the few hours since it appeared, it's fallen off, but the other photo of mine which made explore

Fell off, and is now back on, so who knows. It may even, somehow, make it up to number one.

What amuses me is that I care. I've never said, "Oh, well I don't care if I never get, "explored,", because that would be a lie. Who doesn't want external validation (for those who feel so inclined, imitation isn't the sincerest form of flattery, money is. When someone parts with hard earned cash to get a copy of something you've made... there are better things in life, but they are no easier to come by).

But this one popping up, and then down again so quickly.... it's funny. I think it's a more dramatic picture, but it's not better than the baseball. The baseball shot, though, is an photographer's picture. I know how hard it was to get the one, and how fortuitous (even in the realm of fortune favoring the prepared mind) the other.

And yet... I am still slightly atwitter that this arcane thing, which is Explore, has pulled a couple of my pictures up and said, "these are good".