testmeat photoblog

15 years ago i started this photoblog as a little experiment and a way to encourage me to take photos. it took me five years to post 1000 photos, and another ten years to now make it to 2000. as is tradition (meaning i've done it once before) when reaching this milestone, here's some random statistics on everything i've posted so far.

• my most popular camera is the nikon d60 (888) i got in 2008 and took around south america with me until it died six years later
• despite owning an iphone for a number of years now, i still rarely post photos from it, in fact i've only done so four times, which for context is only twice the number of times i've posted photos taken by x-ray
• my most popular shutter speed is 1/250 (116) and 1/125 (113), which makes sense as i tend to shoot as slow as possible handheld
• my most popular aperture is comfortably 5.6 (310) which again is often as wide as most of my lens could open throughout the years
• my most popular focal length is still 7.3 (260) which is only because it was the default focal length of a compact camera i used for four years. once i start using dslrs with multiple lenses 50.0 (201) became my favourite
• my most productive day for taking photos i've posted here is still 4th january 2008 (19), although back then i was certainly less selective over what i would post. from the last 1000 posts nothing beat at photogenic trip to the namibian desert on 12th may 2017 (9)

i still tag photos with particular keywords, which is probably the least enjoyable part of posting, nevertheless:

• over 25% of the photos i've posted here are from south america (555), which compares to around 7% after the first five years, probably because i spent 20% of the last 10 years there
• discounting photographic terms such as depth of field (374) and black and white (340), the most popular words i tag my photos with are water (297), animal (229) and sky (199), i guess i like nature
• i used to take my camera to a lot more gigs, i clocked up 122 shots from the first 5 years and only another 15 in the decade after
• i've posted over twice as many blue (100) photos as yellow (47), and over twice as many green (123) as i have red (61)
• i've posted more photos of monkeys (32) and lemurs (9) than of cats (18) and dogs (21)
• i've spent more time in the uk (857) than anywhere else in the last 15 years, so it makes sense that it accounts for over 40% of my posts. although i'm far more likely to take photos when i travel, which helps explain why in the last 1000 photos that figure dropped to 18%
• away from home, my most popular countries are peru (131) and bolivia (93), which i went to both in 2009 and 2011, and south africa (103), where i've been to on six occasions
• the most fruitful country that i've only been to once was argentina (77), even though technically i did cross over and back to brazil (35), uruguay (11), chile (27), and a quick visit back home.

i've definitely become more selective in what i post on here, which is the main reason it took me twice as long to post the second thousand compared to the first. in 2015 (120) i took over half as many photos as 2011 (258), that figured halved again the following year in 2016 (62), halved again in 2019 (27) and is currently half again this year (12). however the global pandemic and ensuing lockdown helped me post more frequently, in fact i've posted more photos so far this year (82) than in 2018 (35) and 2019 (28) combined. so with almost everything in the world being so uncertain right now, i can confidently say that i will still find a way to continue travelling, taking and posting photos.

here's a dancing, looping mosaic video of every photo i've posted so far