Sometimes photography gives you a little surprise.

I checked my Flickr stats today and saw 1,767 views on my photos. I had to look at the number twice. Yep—1,767 views!

What makes me smile is that I had more views than any camera club I belong to.

Camera clubs are great places to learn about photography, talk about equipment, enter competitions and see what other photographers are doing. But Flickr reminds me that photography also has another side: getting your photographs out there where people can actually see them.

I’ve never worried too much about having the newest camera or the most expensive lens. Give me one of my old Sony cameras, a photo walk around Toronto and something interesting happening on the street, and I’m happy.

The graph tells an interesting story too. Some days I might get a few hundred views, and then suddenly there is a spike—1,000, 1,500 or even close to 2,000 views. You never really know which photograph is going to catch somebody’s attention.

For me, that is more exciting than worrying about whether a photograph gets a ribbon.

1,767 views means 1,767 opportunities for somebody to stop for a moment and look at my photography.

After all these years of walking around Toronto with a camera, that is still what photography is about for me: take pictures, tell stories, share them—and hope somebody looks.

And today, apparently, quite a few people did!