You know how, in movies or novels about private detectives, the grizzled, shopworn gumshoe or cop says, “There’s no such thing as coincidences, kid,” or, more sophisticatedly, “if we assume it’s a coincidence, kid, that leaves us nowhere to go”? This is something a bit along those lines. Without the involvement of anyone you could refer to as ‘kid’.

It’s not technically about coincidence, but it’s close. It’s also not about synchronicity, for, as Carl G. Jung said, that word describes “circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.” And what I’m about to tell you has what I’d describe as flimsy causal connections.

In a sense, it could just be about degrees of separation. I’d go a bit more strongly on this one, except that the involvement of the internets and suchlike render the mystery of unlikely connections between far-distant people a little less wonderful.

But enough of this fiddle-faddle. Our story today involves two photographs, both of cyclists — in fact, both of cycle messengers, or couriers as the Brits call them. One is in London; one in Chicago. One I’m proud of, and one I acknowledge is a tad mediocre but I still like it.

Let’s have a looksie at the first:

I took this on 21 May 2010 on London Wall while taking a break from work, plodding about looking for some urban wildlife to shoot. I was pretty pleased with this despite some obvious flaws (soft focus, slightly murky backdrop): the composition turned out quite simple, the colours are primary, and that backdrop, though murky, is not too busy.

Most of all, the subject is undeniably cool and stylish, with his microbraids, funky shades, and headphones. His bike is suitably minimalistic: a fixie, no frills, with clean geometry. All of the above led me to upload it to the (at the time) booming photo-sharing site Flickr. To my delight, it did well, attracting sufficient clicks, likes and comments to be included in that site’s prestigious ‘Explore’ rankings — the most ‘interesting’ shots of the day, selected by a secret algorithm.

But best of all — and here comes the degrees of separation thing — the cool-dude subject saw it online! He popped up to answer another user’s comment and his response was suitably cool too.

This fellow, g.money 2010, didn’t respond when I offered to send him the full-sized file. He’s never been back, leading me to suspect that he created his account to look at my pic. Did someone tell him it was there? And more importantly, where did he go from there? In the 13-odd years since then, what did life deal out for him?

In the case of the second photo, from Chicago, those few degrees of separation eventually closed after many years and I found out what happened to my random subject from the streets. But first, here’s the pic:

This was taken on a hot Chicago afternoon as I walked back to my hotel from work, possibly on West Madison St. It was a little too bright and sunny for the slow shutter speeds panning requires (hence the rather poor sharpness and contrast), but I was still quite pleased with the shot as it revealed those little marks of individuality that make this sub- sub-genre so interesting: the rider’s tats, his quirky cap, and his intent expression.

And for the cycling tragics, let’s not neglect the bike: a Peugeot, but not a mass-market one — it’s a track bike, in fixie mode, with no brakes and those funky double footstraps. Large size, too, which is rare for a trackie, and well-suited to its athletic-looking Hermes. It was definitely worth sharing on Flickr.

And on Flickr it languished for 14 years until this last November, when this long-neglected, half-forgotten image attracted an unexpected update.

I answered with condolences and offered to take the pic down and/or send Brett the file if he wanted it. No answer. So, again, all sorts of questions arise. I wish I knew more about what lies behind that cryptic comment. I only hope the memories my pic brought back to Brett were happy ones.

There are a few candidates for Brett Walker if you google the name, but there’s not enough for a specific ID, and after a superficial hunt, I decided to respect his privacy.

So there you have it: two online contacts over a decade and a half, both arising from that nerdy obsession with panning shots of cyclists. There’s no real mystery to these coming up, really — like monkeys with typewriters, if enough images spend enough time in the public domain, someone somewhere will see one of themselves. Or of someone they love.

That is, I suppose, an unintended consequence. Of course we creative types want what we loftily call our ‘work’ to be seen, and to resonate. But once it’s out in the world, there’s no way of knowing if and how those things will happen. It’s quite intriguing to think that others may have found themselves on my Flickr and just not let me know.

It’s pleasing that the 3,713 photos uploaded to my account to date are having an impact, however tiny. But the greater reward is the chance that a few may bring back a little story, a fragment of meaning totally unexpected and random, which was unknowable when the shutter flickered. And there’s no knowing whether this fragment will be quirky or sad or something else — the possibilities are infinite.

These little slivers of extra information effect a huge change on what the image ‘means’ — to me at least. They’re no longer just genre pieces; variations on a theme, compositions of circles, triangles and tricks of the light: they now have a real human dimension. It’s not a lot — we still don’t know the riders’ names, but we know just enough about them to see them as real people.

So sure, it’s close to a coincidence that this photo feedback comes winging back from the universe — but it certainly adds yet another reason to keep going out with a camera and pushing the results out on the web.