• the cover shot for BCAA’s 2010 Calendar
• featured in Westworld magazine (Winter 2009 edition)

You can make the thumbnails below larger by clicking, plus you can move through each shot using the arrows in the bottom corners of the photograph. Once you have decided Click here to cast your vote! and leave a comment below explaining why you liked it.

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Being chosen as one of these elite few can mean a huge increase in your photo’s views and the number of comments and favourites you receive. Land on the front page of Explore, Flickr’s home page, and magical things happen, all of which having to do with increasing your ego, none of which actually leads to earning money as a photographer. But who cares, when you are royalty on Flickr for a day.

I’ll admit to feeling proud like a peacock when my mum first spotted my photo on the Explore home page. Within minutes, the comments and praise flooded in from the Flickratic. I began to pump out more quality shots and I continued getting Explored. I felt like my photography was finally reaching people. It was a great feeling, like a really perfect high-five or winning cookies. It also pushed me to try new techniques and really perfect my images before putting them up on Flickr.

A lot of people have asked me if there is any secret to getting Explored. The most obvious thing is take a great photo. But, beyond a great shot, there seems to be a definite pattern in which photos get Explored. After all, photography is art and the personal taste of the Flickr admins does impact the photos that are chosen. Using my keen intellect and the power of the internet, I have compiled a list of power tips on how to get your photos Explored and because I’ve been a lazy, good-for-nuthin’ blogger as of late, I’m going to share these with you.

Here are my top secret tips for getting your photos Explored on Flickr:

1. Mo’ Bokeh

Bokeh of street lights created with a LensBaby and the star shaped Creative Aperture disk.

By far the most popular type of bokeh photos on Flickr is that derived from taking out of focus pictures of small clusters lights, like on a Christmas tree. If you haven’t heard, the phrase Bokeh, “a photographic term referring to the appearance of point of light sources in an out-of-focus area of an image produced by a camera lens using a shallow depth of field”, then you probably haven’t been on Flickr for very long – because people are nuts about bokeh. Those little out-of-focus orbs of goodness can give a photo a magical, almost surreal quality. And the hip Flickratti are pumping it out faster than you can say, “Ashton killed twitter”. I mean… ahem. What?

How to get this shot:

Crossing your eyes is the easiest way to find cool bokeh. Snicker as you may, but seriously try it the next time you are out at night on a street with street lamps, stop lights, restaurant twinkle lights. Practice this technique in moderation and definitely not in combination with making a funny face because that would seem unprofessional and may weird people out.

Once you’ve found a cool bokeh source like a row of street lights, set your camera’s aperture wide open (>f/3.0) or >f/3.0, >f/5.6 if it’s a telephoto focal length (ie. 200mm at f/5.6) and set your lens to manual. Now pull it almost completely out-of-focus until you see nice fuzzy bits. That the good stuff. Now snap!

Shaped bokeh i.e., stars, hearts, is also really hot right now and companies like LensBaby are making it really easy to do with inexpensive Creative Aperture Kits. If you can’t afford a LensBaby ($100-$270), you can even make your own bokeh shaper lens hood with some black paperboard.

2. Lens Flare

Lens Flare of sunlight streaming through Brisbane Eye Ferris Wheel.

I love lens flare, Michael Bay loves lens flare & so does Flickr. Go ahead. Break all the rules and point your camera at the sun. Within reason of course. Like don’t burn your eyes out or anything. Aim to head out during magic hour (1 hour before sunset) when the sun is low and golden and play with different angles of flares. Also, make sure you’ve got a UV filter so you aren’t damaging your camera’s lens.

3. Hot Chicks

Hot Chick & Musician, Kylee Epp. See behind the scenes shots here.

Like most people, Flickr love pictures of hot chicks. Pretty much any photograph looks better with a hot chick in it. Think about it. A nice still life shot of a bowl of fruit? Boring! A nice still life shot of a bowl of fruit with a hot chick holding a banana? Shizzam! A breathtaking image of a white sand beach? Meh. A breathtaking chick in bikini on a white sand beach? Explored!

It probably won’t surprise you that one of the most commonly explored content is pictures of hot chicks.

More often than not, they are beautiful young photographer/models AKA “modelographers” who have taken their exploration of narcissism to the next level with daily self-portraits called Flickr 365. They are blessed with looks, talent, and a passion for photography, and they are the new power elite on Flickr.

I have to give these young modelographers credit, because they produce near professional quality fashion-esque images of themselves nearly everyday and they are not afraid to try new and creative methods to light, take, and process their images, including film, toy cameras (lomo), strobe. Their photos are edgy, trendy, painful, naked, and oh so indie. They will often get a friend to do makeup or approach young designers whose clothes they or their other young hot chick friends can model. I am constantly amazed and bemused by the sheer number of beautiful images they create and the community wide adoration and respect they receive on Flickr.

How to get this shot:

If you happen to be a young hot chick with a camera, perfect your photography skills by snapping photos of your self and your friends, because the world has never been more open to the idea of a 16-year-old female fashion photographer.

If not, then take a lesson from these young photographers, go out and find someone to model for you, someone hot that looks like they could be in a fashion magazine and all of a sudden your photos go from 2 views to 2, 000 views. Need some tips on finding models I have a post on that

4. Cute animals

Lovely Koala taken at the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary in QLD, Australia.

If you can’t get a hot chick, a cute animal is your next best bet. Everyone loves a cute animal, especially when it’s displaying seemly human characteristics. Ooh, that’s one angry squirrel! Aww look at those fuzzy ducklings. Ooh, a rare hummingbird!

How to get this shot:

Find cute animals. Pets are a good place to start. Zoos are great. Check your backyard, or the park. Go out and find cuteness. I suggest you take shots of animals at eye-level. Take different angles, use different lenses, get creative with these shots. Take a shot of your pooch’s nose close up with a wide angle. That always looks funny. Flickr loves animals in action, animals with personality, and whimsical cat/dog photos.

5. Soft Flower & Plant life Macros

Leaf found in Queen Elizabeth Park on a damp Vancouver afternoon.

Flickr loves soft flower & other plant life macros like leaves and stuff. It’s as simple as that.

How to get this shot:

Find some blossom, blooms, pedals, leaves or flowery things. I am quite the botanist, can’t you tell? Choose an interesting angle, probably one where you are lying in mud. Bring a water sprayer and lightly mist the flowers do they are all dewy. Open your aperture up to f/3.5 and lower so you get some nice background bokeh and you are money.

6. Photos with interesting and tragically bohemian titles

I call this, “Oh love you have bewildered me with your absence”.

You won’t just get explored simply for a title. But, it definitely takes the artistic merit of your shot up an notch and will increase your chances of getting noticed. Even if you are not exploding with photo titling talent, anything is better than IMG_9807. Here are some tragically bohemian titles to get you started:

• Simple
• *broken flight*
• insomnia
• humble
• where’s my freedom?
• love is a trap
• my peace is gone, my heart is heavy

Ahh, I poke fun, but you get the idea. The point is, there are types of photos that are more likely to be Explored than others, but there is no easy way in. You have to take great shots. And to take a great shot, you have to be out in the world taking shots. Take risks. If you always go on a photo walk to the beach at sunset, go in the opposite direction and take some urban landscapes. If you always snap pictures of your cat Mookie, turn the camera on yourself and do some self-portraits. Keep your work fresh and keep posting your best shots on Flickr and one of these days maybe it will be your shot on the front page of Explore!

Got any tips and tricks or great photos you’ve taken that you’d like to share? Add them in the comments!

Sandbank on the coast of Whitsunday Island, Queensland, Austrialia.

Arthus-Bertrand stumbled into his artistic vocation. In 1976, at age 30, he left France and moved to Kenya with his wife Anne and two children to study lions in the Maasai Mara Reserve. At the time he was a journalist dabbling in photography, but in Kenya he began to focus more intently on his camera, snapping shots of the animals while his wife concentrated on the writing. To pay the bills, he began guiding tourists around in a hotel’s hot-air balloon, which he realized was a unique vantage point from which to capture the beauty of the natural world. The aerial perspective became his calling card.

In the 1990s, under the patronage of UNESCO, Arthus-Bertrand began creating an image bank of earth seen from above. These were to be more than just photographs; they were to be a visual record of the world’s environment for the current generation and the many more to come. In 1999, these pictures came together in the form of a book entitled The Earth from Above. It became one of the best-selling illustrated books in the world, with more than three million copies sold, and was translated into 24 languages. Although just a single-volume edition, it soon became a travelling exhibition seen by more than 120 million people in 110 cities.

Tuareg tribesman with camels in Niger’s Tenere Desert.

Arthus-Bernard’s intent with the book was simple. “With Earth from Above, I simply want people to see the earth as it is today, as faithfully as possible,” he said. “What motivates me is the impact a photograph can make within the framework of environmental preservation. The great novelty of our time is that mankind has the power to change its environment and I want my photos to testify to this fact so people can realize this.”

In 2000, the Frenchman mounted another ambitious show entitled Earth from the Air: A Photographic Portrait of Our Planet. The exhibition of 160 images took 10 years of research and fieldwork to produce, during which time Arthus-Bertrand took more than 100,000 shots and clocked up more than 3,000 flying hours, travelling across 76 countries.

Flamingos on Kenya’s Lake Nakuru.

Today, in addition to photography, Arthus-Bertrand is involved in non-profit projects for different organizations. In 2005, he created GoodPlanet.org, a non-profit organization that is dedicated to the promotion of sustainable development, a common theme throughout all his different ventures. Well aware of the impact his own photographic activities have in generating greenhouse gases, he has decided to finance projects that promote renewable energies, are more energy efficient and encourage reforestation. Arthus-Bertrand is also the chairman of GoodPlanet, a non-profit organization in France that has decided in partnership with ADEME (French environment and energy management agency) to combat climate change.

Alberta’s oil sands.

In the meantime, if you happen to be in New York this spring you can catch a new travelling exhibition of Arthus-Bertrand’s remarkable aerial photography: Earth from Above will be on display from May 1 to June 28, 2009, at the World Financial Center Plaza. In 2010, San Francisco and Los Angeles will host the exhibit of 150 large-format images, which has previously been seen in more than 120 cities around the world.

Discharge from a gold mine in Mindanao, Philippines.

As always, his goal with this latest exhibit is to get people to change their lives, leaving smaller footprints and a more sustainable future. As Arthus-Bertrand noted in a recent interview: “We want everything faster. We cut the trees faster than the trees grow. We take the fish faster than they can reproduce. We send CO2 into the sky faster than the CO2 can be absorbed. If we don’t change, nature is going to force us to change.”

Photo Credits:

#1,2,3,4,5,6: Yann Arthus-Bertrand

A few days before Christmas I was tromping around downtown Vancouver, searching for some last-minute gifts. It was snowing heavily and the city was ablaze with an assortment of festive lights. I bought some presents and then took out my camera and started snapping. Everything looked new to me, partly because of the crazy weather, but also because I had not been downtown at night in awhile. That snowy evening I became a tourist in my own city, which was an odd but invigorating sensation. The photos I took revealed a different Vancouver than the one I was accustomed to seeing. For example, the image on the left is of the Sheraton Wall Centre, part of a complex of three skyscrapers in the city centre. On its side there is a reflection of One Wall Centre, another tower with black glazing that Vancouver’s City Planning Department initially opposed because of a concern that it would dominate the downtown skyline. After considerable squabbling, the city planners agreed to a compromise, allowing dark glazing to be installed on the lower half of the tower, with a lighter shade used on the upper half. But when I took this photo there was no lightness to the scene at all. It looked menacing and mysterious and very much like it belonged in Gotham City. The only thing missing was Batman.

As you can plainly see, it was 7:55 when I snapped this shot of the art-deco clock that sits atop the Vancouver Block at 736 Granville Street. As I was aiming my camera, a guy walking past said to his friend, “You know more tourists take photos of that clock than anything else in the city.” I don’t know if that’s true, but it prompted me to try to find some information about this neon landmark. Evidently, the clock dates back to 1911 and was designed by J.E. Parr and Thomas Fee, who were the most prolific Vancouver architects of the pre-World War I boom. The duo also built the Manhattan Apartments on Thurlow at Robson (1907), and the first reinforced concrete structure in Vancouver, the Europe Hotel (1908). Their patron was W. Lamont Tait, a lumber wholesaler, for whom Parr & Fee did one of the first mansions in Shaughnessy Heights, “Glen Brae” (1911), which is now the Canuck Place Children’s Hospice.

Another of the CPR’s legendary railway hotels, the present-day Hotel Vancouver, which was built in 1939, is actually the third Hotel Vancouver. The second version, constructed in 1916, was designed in a grand Italianate revival style, and was considered one of the great hotels of the British Empire. It had several ballrooms and lounges, as well as an adjacent opera house and all the bathrooms were fitted with marble sinks and gold-plate faucetry. Until the opening of the CBC Regional Broadcast Centre in the 1970s, the offices and broadcast studios of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Vancouver bureau were on the hotel’s mezzanine floor, overlooking the corner of Hornby and Georgia. A large art-deco sound stage used for radio theatre and musical broadcasts was located on the ground floor. The preposterous 1975 thriller Russian Roulette, starring George Segal, which features a plot to assassinate Soviet premier Alexei Kosygin, staged its climactic gunfight on the hotel’s famous green rooftop, which looked like a castle battlement on the night I took this shot.

There are several huge construction projects taking place in Vancouver right now. One of the more prominent is a $400 million redevelopment of the old Hotel Georgia. The 1927 heritage hotel is being completely renovated and will re-emerge as a Valencia Group property, a U.S. hotelier known for its exclusive boutique properties. The new hotel will actually have fewer rooms than the Georgia, down from 313 to 170. There is also a 48-storey tower being constructed next door that will feature 155 condominiums called “The Private Residences,” which sounds anonymous and pretentious at the same time. An image of the design is draped over the site. I took a shot of it with this futuristic-looking light in the foreground that was shining a beam on the north wall of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Although this is definitely a city shot, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would place it in Vancouver.

The image being projected onto the facade of the Vancouver Art Gallery by the powerful beam of light in the previous picture was part of an installation entitled “The House of the Ghosts” by Kwakwaka’wakw artist Marianne Nicolson. The show has ended now, but while it was still running the projected image of a Big House was continuously shining on the facade, although it was only visible after sunset. That reflected the traditional Kwakwaka’wakw belief that the world of ghosts, although continuously present, is only accessible to humans at night. Though extremely modern in its medium, the techniques and subject matter used in “The House of the Ghosts” are based in the traditions of Pacific Northwest First Nations’ art. Nicolson’s creation includes stylized killer whales, wolves, owls and a ghost puppet, all believed to heal the sick and revive the dead. Also included is the Sisiutl, a double-headed serpent with a human face at its centre, which appears as the crossbeam of the Gallery’s facade, reinforcing a sense of balance.

Plodding south on Burrard Street through driving snow, I came across St. Paul’s Hospital’s “Lights of Hope” display. The goal of the annual show is to raise funds for equipment, research and patient care, and it’s been quite successful. More than nine million dollars have been donated since St. Paul’s started lighting up the sky in 1998. This December, the exuberant display inspired a man who was walking past to start singing Christmas carols. That in turn caused another man, who was clearly overflowing with the holiday spirit, to punch the singer in the head three times. I witnessed no head punching when I was there, but the lights of St. Paul spoke to me as well. In this shot they look more like a painting than a photo and, like most everything else that night, completely surreal.

Photo Credits:

#1,2,3,4,5,6: Kerry Banks