What are you like?

I’ve crunched a few numbers covering the six years this blog has been running to look at which things you like most, and a few other things that the numbers say about you.

We all say that the camera or the gear don’t matter, so this should be reflected in the viewing figures, right?

And if I had any sense, I would be looking at the figures and writing what most people want to read, yes?

But, as it says on the (very large) tee shirt: “in theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they are not; and in practice the difference between theory and practice is usually greater than theory predicts”.

Countries

If you were an average reader, you would be mostly American. Interestingly, as this blog is in English (or close – I’m in Yorkshire), the top tier of countries are not all Anglophone. Mind you, many other countries speak English better than the English, to our shame.

The countries that account for the majority of visitors.

Number of countries seen, by year.

So while my readers may be 25% American, you are also 9% Swedish. The total number of distinct separate countries that have visited the blog is 99. There are around 194 countries in the world, depending on who is counting, so that’s about half the countries in the world that have visited. And most of them visited in 2023. Wow! Where I live, a trip to Manchester feels exotic.

Categories

I flag most articles with at least one category. It lets the reader just read posts on cameras, for example. So there’s one piece of information in how many articles I post in each category. This would tell you whether I’m a closet gear freak, for example. There’s also a piece of information in which categories you actually read. I might be pontificating on art and the meaning of life but my readers want more stuff on lenses or buff butts.

There’s a bit of overlap, as some articles have more than one theme. There’s also the fact that if you read each post as it arrives, you don’t get to pick the category. So what I’ll do is count separately the things I post and the pages that are loaded from searches or links. These are ones that people looked for or went to, rather than just looking at each week’s page as it arrives. It does show that most people read the weekly blog page but don’t go further. On the other had, some articles are obviously searched for frequently online, as the most popular articles are not ones that I link to often from other posts: you went looking for these. Interestingly another (more famous) blogger did some analysis of his stats and found an increase in people looking at his articles on the Pentax Espio cameras. I’ve been driving some of that traffic from here. So that makes the next analysis interesting.

Within the top 80% of the total loads, these were the most popular articles.

Going by the page categories, the most popular articles were on cameras or film, as you would probably expect. Oddly, the most popular post of all is about the Konica Genba, which is not a mainstream camera. This was followed by the Pentax Espio 928, which is still unexpected as it’s another point and shoot (but a good one). So are point and shoot film cameras the most interesting?

Referrers

Or how you got here. The biggest source is internet searches, as you might expect.

What is also interesting is how many of the top referrers are also photography blogs or podcasts. I suppose it should not be a surprise – if you are interested in reading or hearing about photography, you will probably have several sources. There may be a danger though that we form a closed loop, all referring to each other.

Views

It’s interesting to see how many pages each visitor views. This blog is quite well linked: the pages usually contain links to other blog pages. By counting how many different pages each visitor views, I can see if you read just the one page or follow some of the links. The answer is that on average each visitor reads two blog posts.

Conclusion

Many thanks to you all. I’m delighted that anyone reads this blog at all, let alone such an exotic and engaged bunch as you. I’ll continue to write, not because I want views but because I enjoy taking pictures and writing articles with pictures in. And I’ll continue to marvel that I get readers from places like Aruba and the Faroe Islands.

Thank you.

What’s it all about?

Not me, by the way, but the spirit of curiousity lives in us all.

and why Fup Duck?

Well, if my mum asks, it’s because I’m a film-using photographer.

So, I’ve been taking photographs for a while now. Film faded, digital came along, then film rose again. I’ve had access to cameras since I was quite young: my mum gave the family camera for a school trip to France and was horrified when I came back with pictures of waste bins. I have owned, destroyed, swapped and sold a range of photographic gear. It’s an interest (OK, a hobby) that has never left me.

In all this time I am largely self taught. As in I have never done any formal study or been on a course. The library and various magazines were my friends as I explored fail-space vigorously. Every time I would try something, Fup Duck was peering over my shoulder. Each time I did something horribly wrong, I knew I had Fup Duck.

But while Fup Duck was my frequent foe, the duck was a good teacher if you listened. But you had to listen to yourself, as ducks can’t talk (although you can often hear them laughing). So every time I opened the camera back or the developing tank to see a smiling Fup Duck, I would try to think what I’d done wrong so that I could avoid doing it again. Unless I meant to do it, in which case I called it art.

So hereinafter are the tales of Fup Duck.

I hope you enjoy them and possibly avoid the ones you haven’t experienced yet.

Addition

Privacy – I personally do not and will not make any more use of your personal details than to answer a message from you. If you want me to know less than that, post directly to this blog. WordPress will know more about you than I do, so see their terms and conditions.

Copyright – the pictures I use are mine. If I do use someone else’s picture I will credit them. Do not steal my pictures. If you want to use one, contact me; I’m not unreasonable.

Thanks.