By: Chuck Miller
Photography, Uncategorized

Look whose photo got picked up on Twitter!

Background.

Last year, I shot the vintage Coca-Cola advertisement in Schenectady – the one painted on the side of an old building on Broadway – as part of an experiment.  The idea was to cram two rolls of 35mm film into a medium format camera – and at the time, I was playing around with that plastic Chinese camera called a Holga.

I was able to expose the films at the same time with one click of the shutter, have them developed, and then jigsaw the two pieces of film back together into one single image.  This shot was the best of my attempts.

Coca-Cola Relieves Fatigue 5 cents - Schenectady, N.Y. - sprocket hole and layered film
Coca-Cola Relieves Fatigue 5 cents, by Chuck Miller

This photo actually received a ribbon at the 2010 New York State Fair, in the category of “color-non traditional.”  And I was happy.

Now every so often, I’ll check a section on my flickr site that allows me to see who’s been viewing or linking to my pictures.  Sometimes I’m very surprised at who picks up on my images – for example, a graphic design company in Schenectady, Brayton Graphics, got a look at my HDR picture of the Bumpy’s Ice Cream sign in Schenectady, and tweeted it all over the place.

Bumpy's Polar Freeze - Scream Until Mom Stops the Car
Bumpy's Polar Freeze - Scream Until Mom Stops the Car, by Chuck Miller

And there was that time when newlyweds Mindy and Scott fell in love with my shot of the General Electric sign in Schenectady, and used it as part of their brides.com webpage.

General Electric sign on GE Administration Building, Schenectady, New York
General Electric Sign at Night. Photo by Chuck Miller.

But let’s go back to the Coca-Cola advertisement.

I checked my flickr stat-metrics page, and discovered that in the span of 24 hours, four people had selected the split-film picture as one of their favorites.  Okay, usually I get a “favorite” hit for one picture or another; but not four hits on the same picture on the same day.  That, and the picture has picked up a ton of views, more so than my usual top-viewed pictures of Nipper’s Polar Panorama and the Basketball Backboard BLAM shots.

Okay… what’s going on?

I clicked on the stat-metrics for that picture, and suddenly discovered that the image had been picked up on Twitter.  A Twitter user named HolgaDirect tweeted the picture to all of its contacts, and next thing I know everybody’s going to the flickr site and liking what they see.

I guess I know what this means…

Chuck’s gotta finally get a Twitter handle.

Well, although @ChuckMiller was claimed, I was able to snag @ChuckTheWriter, which matches my personal homepage URL.  Whether or not I’ll actually use this Twitter account for anything other than just reserving the name is another story.

But the fact that my images are getting tweeted around the Twitterverse – and it’s bringing people to my flickr site and they’re checking out my photos – that’s kind of a good thing.