On second thought, here's a reflection on 10 years of Photo Potpourri ...

In my introductory note when starting the recent travel series on my November visit to Savannah, I said I wasn't going to do much to mark this blog's 10th anniversary this month.

I've had a change of heart, considering that in 2013, when I marked the fifth anniversary, I dedicated a post to telling viewers a little bit about the statistics that a blog owner gets to view to assess whether he/she gets the traffic they hope for ... and to gauge what types of posts are the most popular.

It occurred to me this past week that maybe I ought to do that again to mark the 10th anniversary, which arrived a few days ago on Dec. 11. And so here goes:

By Dec. 11 in  2013, I'd composed more than 400 posts here, fueled largely by the 105 total posts in 2012 alone. The years 2009 (88) and 2011 (82) weren't too shabby, either, if you're speaking purely in terms of volume.

From that point on it seems, I must have made a subconscious effort to shift from volume to better quality. (At least, I hope the quality has improved). That's because years 2014 through 2018 were not nearly as prolific as the first five. Today, my number of total posts from launch day until today numbers 644, and, curiously, my most prolific year these past five years has been 2018, with 80 total posts so far.

One thing that hasn't changed since 2013 (and probably since a year or two before that even) is the post fetching the most views, or "hits." It remains the same: a Nov. 19, 2009, profile I did of wedding photographer Rich Miller as part of Photo Potpourri's former  "Photographer in the Spotlight" series (a series, I might add, that proved popular to viewers ... but proved to be a lot of work for me). The image leading off the post and the one at the right are Miller's images, by the way.

The "Spotlight" write-up about Rich, a former longtime staff photographer for The Indianapolis News and Indianapolis Star, had fetched more than twice as many hits than the No. 2 story at the five-year mark of this blog, and I can report that five years later ... not only is it still the all-time hits leader, but it also is still ahead of the No. 2 post by more than twice as many hits.

But in 2018, I have a new "No. 2" post. It's a tribute I did this past April for Garfield Shakespeare Co. co-founder and former artistic director Joe Cook, who passed away April 1. It amassed four-figure hits in a very short period and bumped to third place the previous No. 2, a Sept. 17, 2010, post I did about GSC's production of Macbeth presented in a U.S. colonial setting.

The rest of the current all-time Top 10 (in total visits over 10 years) as of this month are as follows:

4. A Nov. 7, 2010, post on then-Butler University freshman basketball player Chishawn Hopkins. That's Hopkins at right in his first game with Butler.

5. A Dec. 26, 2012, post on the unusually high number of oddly tilting trees in Indianapolis' Garfield Park.

6. An  Oct. 3, 2013, Indiana small-college football "Game Day" series post about the campus of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

7. A Nov. 12, 2013, post on the colors of autumn leaves I came across near my Indy home. (See photo below)

8. A Feb. 22, 2009, post on French master photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

9. An Aug. 9, 2016, post on UIndy baseball player Brendan Dudas' Wiffle Ball league and how he and his girlfriend stepped in at a critical moment to care for Brendan's two young nephews.

10. An April 27, 2017, post profiling a swamp preserve at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens near Charleston, S.C.  (See photo above)

And now, some observations about what these statistics tell me.

I'm pleased that the post on Joe Cook (left) was able to reach so many people. Cook was a lifelong theater enthusiast -- he co-founded three community theater groups in the Indianapolis area, all of which are still in operation. Plus, he welcomed anyone and everyone to participate in his Garfield Shakespeare Co. productions. GSC availed its productions to anyone and everyone because the troupe does not charge an admission fee. The picture of him here was taken from The Tempest, a fall 2013 show hamstrung by cast defections, forcing Cook -- who started the production as the production's director -- to fill one of the cast openings (he played the kindly Neapolitan courtier Gonzalo).

Cook felt that theater should not be something people can't enjoy simply because of affordability. He enthusiastically accepted donations, however, because it does cost money to run a theater troupe, but he and Bradley Jones, Cook's husband and GSC's chief costume designer, would often dip into their own pockets to pay for things they needed.

In much the same vein, I'm pleased that Brendan Dudas (pictured at bat in the photo above) and his girlfriend got the attention for how they stepped in to help his nephews. He also sponsors an annual Wiffle Ball tournament to raise money for Diffuse Intrisic Pontine Glioma, a rare form of brain cancer that claimed the life of his 12-year-old niece Whitley.

Below are key images from the aforementioned posts on the titling trees in Garfield Park, the striking landscape at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and a scene from GSC's 2010 product of Shakespeare's Macbeth.