For our eighth anniversary series "8 Years, 8 Members, 8 Stories" we contacted Flickr members who joined Flickr in February 2004. We asked them what the best thing that’s happened to them since they became a Flickr member, what it is that they love about Flickr, and what their eight favorite photos from other Flickr members are. We will publish the eight installments throughout the day.

The fourth member we would like to introduce today is Chris Heathcote (a.k.a. antimega), from London. For him Flickr really is the Eyes of the World, as it lets him keep up with what lots of friends are doing, as well as find new people that are doing interesting things.

Whilst Flickr is often thought to be for ‘photographers’, what Chris enjoys most are the slices of life it allows you to share, in particular what you’re interested in, and what means something to you. "Flickr was the first website to really push sharing in public – ‘why would someone want to see a photo of your lunch?’ – but it’s proved that the random, the banal, the matter-of-fact really does keep up a constant communication with hundreds of people."

To illustrate, Chris shows us his most popular food photo (out of around 5000) – a brilliant dessert he had at the San Francisco restaurant Citizen Cake (now sadly closed, but our eyes can still feast on this beauty).

Here are the eight favorite photos Chris’ wants to share with us:

"I have many friends that go to places where I haven’t been, and through Flickr I get to experience them too. I’d have loved to go to the Shanghai Expo a few years ago, but thankfully people like Dan have taken great pictures."

"Timo‘s photos are always beautiful, but his explorations of rain and focus are particularly poignant."

"Paul‘s got a great eye for the city, and the shapes and textures therein."

"I think Flickr has really sparked a revival in many kinds of traditional photography – from pinholes to plate film. Heather‘s solargraphy shows what’s possible with just a film canister and a piece of film – a stunning shot that took 6 months to make."

"The Hello Little Fella group explores pareidolia – the experience of seeing faces in things. Matt‘s photo is one of my favourites – a slightly poorly little fella having his temperature taken."

"Glen catalogues many of the food disasters that prevailed in 60s and 70s cookbooks. Constantly amusing, but builds into a great resource as more and more of the food from recent history gets catalogued."

"Likewise, Steve is building a great collection of British Rail ephemera (as well as documenting 50s-80s architecture)."

"I think the Flickr Commons is one of the greatest achievements of Flickr: getting institutions to publish their archive online – not only letting everyone have instant access, but it also makes them easy to find, and even lets you use and reference the images too. Institutions have also found it useful for crowdsourcing tagging and filing, plus sometimes more information comes out through comments and notes than would have been found if the image was just filed in a physical archive."

Thank you Chris for telling us your story! Please stay tuned for our next episode.

Photos from foe, antimega, cityofsound, Ti.mo, blech​, heather, moleitau, glen.h, smallritual and The National Archives UK.