Pic(k) of the Week: Wetlands, illuminated

Winter afternoon sun dappled the wetlands of Burnt Fork Creek.

Photographed from a boardwalk along the South Peachtree Creek Trail: DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 20 January 2025.

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Gunther Schuller: Variant I on a Theme of Thelonious Monk (Criss Cross)

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YFGF gets 'Explored'

Flickr is a website for uploaded images. Since 2006, I have been posting most of photographs there (@Cizauskas).

Each day during the year, Flickr employs a 'secret' algorithm to select five hundred images for a daily-posted Explore page —all exemplifying some sort of 'interestingness.'

During 2024, Flickr selected seventeen of my images for Explore.

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● ROW 1

• Tree falls into winter (12 December 2024)
  ☞ 8,534 views; 266 'faves'; 78th chosen of 500 selected that day.
  ☞ This image achieved the highest Explore position of any of my seventeen images.
• Woodland at Glenn Creek (22 November 2024)
  ☞ 8,766 views; 217 'faves'; 102nd/500.
• Purple aster (13 October 2024)
  ☞ 8,992 views; 232 'faves'; 150th/500.
• Bird of paradise, against blue wall (13 September 2024)
  ☞ 6,177 views; 188 'faves; 313th/500.
• Paddleboard morningtide (28 August 2024)
  ☞ 6,632 views; 128 'faves'; 479th/500.
• Strasburg pitches (04) (28 August 2024)
  ☞ 6453; 73 'faves'; 186th/500.
• Umbrella in the foliage (12 August 2024)
  ☞ 9,728 views; 171 'faves'; 92nd/500.
• Moving Keys (24 July 2024)
  ☞ 7,379 views; 103 'faves'; 351st/500.

● ROW 2

• Gnomes' back beat on parade (26 June 2024)
  ☞ 8,358 views; 120 'faves'; 216th/500.
• Dancing to the tunes (02) (26 June 2024)
  ☞ 8,514 views; 118 'faves'; 157th/500.
• Geese, too? (19 June 2024)
  ☞ 6,882 views; 162 'faves'; 269th/500.
• Percussionist in the green (3 June 2024)
  ☞ 10,310 views; 119 'faves'; 85th/500.
  ☞ The most viewed of my 2024 images, 'Explored' or not.
• Lanceleaf coreopsis (sepals & petals) (10 May 2024)
  ☞ 9,497 views; 282 'faves'; 98th/500.
  ☞ The most 'faved' of my 2024 images, 'Explored' or not.
• Arabia Lake (in early spring) (24 April 2024)
  ☞ 7,658 views; 215 'faves'; 230/500.
• Arabia Mountain spring landscape (03) (5 April 2024)
  ☞ 8,822 views; 217 'faves'; 104th/500.
• Holy hellebore (5 February 2024)
  ☞ 6,921 views; 207 'faves'; 474th/500.

● ROW 3

• Winter beech woodland (12 January 2024)
  ☞ 7,873 views; 210 'faves'; 474th/500.

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WHAT IS EXPLORE?

Explore is a Flickr feature with the intent of showing you 'some of the most awesome photos on Flickr.' Photos are automatically selected by computer according to a secret algorithm called Interestingness. The top 500 photos ranked by Interestingness are shown in Explore.

Flickr has stated that many factors go into calculating Interestingness: a photo's tags, how many groups the photo is in, views, favorites, where click-throughs are coming from, who comments on a photo and when, and more. The velocity of any of those components is a key factor. For example, getting 20 comments in an hour counts much higher than getting 20 comments in a week.

Is Explore a showcase for the top Flickr photographers? No. It's for photo viewers, not the photographers. It exists so that, at any moment, anyone who wants to view interesting photos can go to Explore and have a reasonable chance of seeing something interesting.

Does that imply that photographs not in Explore are uninteresting? Of course not. Many wonderful photos are uploaded to Flickr each day not selected for Explore. But, to serve its purpose, Explore only includes a small sampling of all of the photos on Flickr, showing photos from many different people to create a diverse selection.

— Big Huge Labs.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Winter morning pines

"Pine trees, son. Pine trees!" the distiller's father once said to me, perplexed by my Yankee question.

Here: pines trees under a winter morning sun (with a bit of snow to boot), on the Hawthorne Nature Trail, in Northlake, DeKalb County, Georgia, USA. 12 January 2025.

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Johannes Brahms: "String Sextet no. 2"

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Pic(k) of the Week: The roots

Roots and tendrils and boughs, oh my.

Seminary Wood in Legacy Park: City of Decatur, Georgia, USA. 22 December 2024.

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Joanne Brackeen: "Haiti B"

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Pic(k) of the Week retrospective for 2024.

Since joining Flickr in 2006, I have uploaded 25,417 photographs and images. I've used the website as a cloud backup, a journal of 'good fermentables,' and, more recently, as a photography portfolio. Since 2009, I have culled through those images every week and selected one as Pic(k) of the Week: fifty-two, of course, for each year.

Here's a retrospective of the images I selected for 2024. Clicking on the thumbnail will take you to the full-sized image.

January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December

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DATA

Of my fifty-two selections in 2024:

• 18 images (35 %) were landscapes: intimate, grand, or tangentially (including trees and woodlands)
  vs. 21 (40 %) in 2023.
• 16 (31 %) were of flowers, blossoms, plants, or fungi
  vs. 15 (28 %) in 2023.
• 4 (7 %) were of birds or other animals
  vs. 9 (17 %) in 2023.
• 7 (13 %) were neotopographical: structures, objects, vehicles, or signs (excluding breweries, wineries, distilleries).
  vs. 7 (13 %) in 2023.
• 8 (15 %) were street-photography or human portraits, primarily or tangentially. (This and neotopographical can intersect).
  vs. 7 (13 %) in 2023.
• 4 (7 %) were images of the sky or astronomy-related.
  vs. 5 (9 %) in 2023.
• 3 (6 %) were fermentable or comestible related.
  vs. 6 (11 %) in 2023.
• 4 (7 %) were of art, music, or culture in one form or another.
  vs. 2 (3 %) in 2023.
• 1 image (2 %) was processed as black-and-white.
  vs. 0 in 2023.
(The percentage total is greater than 100 %, as categories overlap and percentages were rounded up.)

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PREVIOUS RETROSPECTIVES

I began the Pic(k) of the Week feature in 2009; I began collating image retrospectives in 2014.

• 2023
• 2022
• 2021 retrospective (n/a)
• 2020
• 2019
• 2018
• 2017
• 2016
• 2015
• 2014

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CHANGE OF EMPHASIS & CONCLUSION

I began my Yours For Good Fermentables blog in 2002, as a vehicle for examining beer (and other fermentables). Since 2020 or so, it and my photos have moved on to explorations of intimate landscapes, nature, and 'new topographics.' A beer may sneak in now and again, but I now refer to the blog simply as YFGF (even though I have yet to change the masthead.)

As to so-called 'social media,' I last posted to Facebook on 16 May 2022, and to Twitter (aka 'X') on 17 December 2023. On the other hand, I have maintained my Instagram account (@tcizauskas) and I have added Threads (@tcizauskas) and, most recently, Bluesky (@tcizauskas.bsky.social)...after a short, now ended, dabble on Vero. Whether I continue to do so, I have yet to decide.

To conclude, I thank of all of you who continue to patronize my blog and I wish you health, safety, and fulfillment in 2025. Sveiks!

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