[goldins]

Interesting... playing around with similar tags and some offsets, I got those results as well as some irrelevant images (aurora borealis for "friend"). Definitely a concern when you need the placeholders to be at least somewhat relevant. Personally, I have no problem with using http://placehold.it/

[jfoucher]

Yes, this is often a problem, as people on flickr will tag their photos rather loosely...

Try and be a bit more specific in your tags, putting several separated by commas.

http://flickholdr.com/250/185/happy,office for example, might be more appropriate.

Disclaimer: I'm the developper behind flickholdr