Accidental Fame Monster

I've posted this photo to the left before - it is the image that seems to incur the most bizarre and unexpected steady flow of high traffic. Of all my Flickr-hosted images, this one would be the Malaysian Whore. It gets around to people and places and I simply cannot fathom why. Perhaps I've just seen it so much that the original effect it had on me has dissolved? I don't know. But I do know this image has gotten to places without my knowing.

One of Flickr's nifty features is a stats screen to show view traffic of the gallery. Not being much interested in those numbers, I never really dove into it too deep, just noticed it was there. Curiosity got the better of me this weekend and I ventured to that screen to see the view traffic of the day and sure enough this image was again on top of view hits. Something I hadn't noticed before was a panel that shows image referrer's URLs to source the flow of traffic. It only seems to keep a log of traffic over "today" and "yesterday", but that was certainly enough for me to get an idea of why this image seems to engulf the numbers on the traffic counter:

• http://basedigitalphotography.com/low-key-photography-make-a-chiaroscuro-effect/
• http://www.theinspirationblog.net/showcases/dark-mysterious-20-examples-of-low-key-photography/

Unbeknownst to me, some time last year The Inspiration Blog and Base Digital Photography both produced articles on low key photography and utilized my image as a reference piece for their material. At last, the puzzle is solved!

Late as my recognition of their credited use of my image is, I am deeply flattered and thank both sites for finding my work of a high enough caliber to be paired with their writing. I do wish, however, that they'd have let me know of their use of the image, if only to extend a mutually credited thanks. Not that I'm one to complain about any kind of credited use of my images (especially when the images link directly back into my main Flickr gallery), but it would've been nice to have known the cause of this inadvertent fame monster of a piece.

Again, to the writers Lucas Cobb and "Admin", I thank you!