I use Flickr to host my photos as it is a convenient repository and has some nice, but generally subtle community aspects to the website.

However, there is a dark side to the website – and that is the groups.

Groups are a convenient way to collect photos of a similar topic from a range of people into one area – and I submit some of my photos to some groups that interest me.

However, groups have administrators to look after them, and some administrators can be rather aggressive in trying to make their groups increasingly popular. Not sure if they get any reward from administrating a popular group, but certainly some people seem very motivated to promote their cause.

On Flickr, an administrator can find a photo and post a pre-written message on the photo inviting you to submit your photo to their group. I get the occasional invite most weeks and and I tend to accept about half of the invitations.

However, the afore mentioned aggressive admins can go through a person’s photo gallery like a proverbial dose of salts, scattering invites all over the place with gay abandon.

After going out for a walk today, I came home to invites to submit a host of photos to seven different groups – all from one person. Argh!

So, thank you for making me go though my gallery deleting your invites from all the photos you just spammed.

I have just received the periodic email from Somerset House, which lists the things they have on each month and they are featuring an exhibition of photos of London taken by one Richard Bryant, a noted photographer.

Apart from the exhibition though, there is also a competition for the best photos of London taken by amateurs.

The fluff about the exhibition reads thus:

Richard Bryant is one of Britain’s leading architectural photographers, and in this new exhibition he presents his personal account of London. Picking out views, spaces and architectural detail, the combination of world-famous buildings and little known secrets forces the viewer to reassess what they know about the city.

The competition though – that is being run via the ubiquitous Flickr website.

Richard Bryant will judge the entries himself and he’ll take the winners on a personal guided tour of his exhibition, offering advice on how to take great urban photographs. His favourite photos will also be featured in a winners gallery on the Somerset House website.

The prize is fame and glory!

Yesterday was one of the periodic opening at the Acton Depot, which holds tons of kit that can’t be fitted into the Transport Museum’s Covent Garden venue.  This weekend was themed around miniatures, so the place was also manned by lots of model railway groups.

As part of the fun, the museum also organised one of their periodic Scavenger Hunts – where teams are given a sheet of clues and have to rush around taking photos of the answers. Prizes awarded to the first team back and the one with the most correct answers.

My team (routemaster) did quite well I think – getting 17 out of 20 correct. We thought we had 19 – but two turned out to be wrong answers. Opps!

Part of the competition is to upload photos to Flickr who are part of the event – so you can have a look at my attempts here.

Much fun, and good to have a wander round the depot again – and thanks to Annie Mole for blogging about it so I could attend, along with the team at the Museum for organising the event.

Also, a write up of my first visit to the depot last March.

Just a tip – if heading over to the periodic open weekend at the Acton Depot this weekend, you would be strongly advised to try and get tickets from the Covent Garden museum before heading over to Acton as the queues there can at times get rather lengthy.

I’ll be there on the Saturday afternoon for the Scavenger Hunt fun.

Enjoy if you are heading over – some photos from a previous visit.

Earlier today, a quite remarkable milestone was passed as the 100,000th person looked at my Flickr collection of photos of an “Abandoned London” taken on Christmas morning – which is quite staggering.

When I got up on Christmas morning, I really had no idea if the photo session would work – it was just an idea to cycle into town and see what was possible. For all I knew, the West End would be as busy as a normal morning and the trip would be a waste, and to be honest I was really tempted to skip the project as, like half of London, I had a bad cold. Indeed, I was so grotty that I on the way into town, I had decided to stop at Tower Bridge, take some photos and go back home. Fortunately, I took a wrong turn and ended up at Bank for the first photos of the morning. Even though I knew the City would be abandoned, getting there heartened me to carry on to the West End.

That wrong turn probably saved the morning!

However, the one thing I never expected was the reaction to the photos once I put them up here on the blog and on my Flickr account. I hoped the photos would be interesting – and I am delighted that so many people seem to have liked the end results.

However, it has been truly quite staggering how people have reacted to the photos I took, especially as I am but an amateur with the camera and can’t consider the photos to more than just tourist snaps.

They were also featured on the Daily Telegraph‘s website, which was rather awesome and loads of other blogs and websites commented on the images.

One thing which cannot come across in the photos is the silence of the city though – and the experience of cycling around an empty city really is something which I cannot recommend highly enough to anyone willing to try it one Christmas morning. The photos are one thing, but to be there yourself – that is quite something else.

I get the impression from comments going around the place that a fair number of cities will have photographers out in force this coming Christmas – which should be quite exciting to see.

Stats Porn:

The Flickr Set > 100,000 views & 48 comments.

The individual photos > 317,000 views, 299 favourites & 123 comments.