10 Things I Love About Flickr (And its Users)

I love Flickr! It magnificently combines a powerful and fully-featured image sharing site with community features, to create something greater than the sum of its parts. It is not without its shortcomings, as I described in detail in a previous article, which generated a lively discussion. However, despite the flaws, the incredible strengths of Flickr make it a service that almost everyone who takes photos will find valuable in some way. Like most things in life, the more you put into it, the more you get back, but the wealth of freely given advice, beautiful photography and community interaction is staggering.

Here I discuss, in no particular order, the ten things that I love most about Flickr and its users. Many of these points apply to any art of photography sharing site or community, but some are specific to Flickr. As a Flickr pro user, it is my preferred photo sharing site, and for that reason is the focus of this article. I do not work for Flickr, nor am I receiving any compensation for my opinion.

One of my favourite Flickr photoraphers – CC mugley

Amazing photographers

If I’m ever needing inspiration, or just want to look at beautiful photos, there’s no shortage of them on Flickr. There are lots of ways to find great photos, through Flickr’s Explore feature, searching for a theme then sorting the results by “interestingness”, viewing the favourites of another photographer you respect, viewing the pool of one of the many high quality invitation only photo groups, or simply adding great photographers to your contacts list and looking through your contacts’ latest photos. Don’t think that because Flickr is a free service that the photos there aren’t amazing, some of the worlds’ most incredible photographers use it.

Comments on photos

I am a comment junkie. When someone likes my photos enough to share their thoughts, I find that an huge complement, and I am truly grateful for each and every comment given in that spirit. Readers of my previous Flickr article may be surprised to hear me say that I love every comment, but it’s true. Granted, the shortest comments have the least impact on me, and I won’t remember what was said or by whom not long after I have read them. However, the very fact that someone liked my photo enough to tell me so, however simply, is sincerely appreciated.

At its best, comments on photos can become fascinating, engaging and highly informative conversations that have a genuine impact on my photographic skills or my attitude towards photography. I have become a better photographer in part due to insightful comments on my photography.

Detailed descriptions on photos

As helpful as insightful comments on my photos are, so are informative and detailed descriptions on photos. It can be a time-consuming task to add a description to even a few photos, so it is especially appreciated when a photographer chooses to share behind the scenes information about their work. The best description thoroughly but concisely details the creative process of taking their photo, share the technical details of how the result was achieved and sometimes even offer ideas for how to take the creative process further. This glimpse into the workings of a talented photographer’s method is profoundly helpful to other photographers wanting to learn how to take similar photos. To every photographer who has pulled back the curtain and showed usbehind the scenes, I offer my deepest thanks.

Photo metadata

There’s so much more information associated with a photo than just the image itself. All kinds of metadata, from the EXIF, to tags, to geolocation, to description, to IPTC and more. This is hard to keep organised, and even though it could do with some improvement, Flickr does an admirable job. Just about any metadata associated with an image can be read from the file if it’s embedded, or added afterwards.

Organize

It could use some refinement, and extra features, but the Organize interface for organizing your photos is really quite awesome. You can sort, tag, describe, map, and edit your photos in this one interface. You can add photos to groups, manage your own sets, set permissions or delete images as well. Considering that’s it’s all done via a web interface, the speed and flexibility is impressive. I’d like to see work continue on this important part of the Flickr experience, but I’m very impressed with it as it is.

The Strobist group is one of my favourites – CC Mhogan35

Groups

If all we could do was read photo descriptions and comment on others’ work, Flickr would be wonderful, but groups take it a big step further. Members who share a particular interest, or some common characteristic, such as their location, can come together and form a Flickr group. While simple compared to some community sites, Flickr groups are nonetheless fantastic resources for photographers. A shared photo pool and custom discussion threads let groups share their work and ideas on their specific topic. With these simple tools, a huge variety of special interest groups have been created, and the very best groups are some of the best photography learning resources in the world, and they can all be accessed for free! I run a Flickr group myself, and I am loving the experience of connecting with photographers and sharing our photos and ideas.

Many ways to find photos

There are billions of photos on Flickr, from all over the world, of all kinds of subjects. Despite this, finding photos that relate to your particular interest is easy. Flickr have given photographers and members many ways to make available and find photos. The search function will search titles and descriptions, as well as tags that members add to their photos. If a member belongs to a group, they can add their photo to that group’s pool to be seen by others interested in that group’s niche. Clicking on a photo’s tag will show all photos by that user with that tag, or if you like, all photos marked with the tag. This particular feature allows me to collect photos that my own Flickr group’s members take for our weekly challenges. If you want to see photos of a particular location, you can find it on the Flickr map, and geo-tagged photos will appear as points on the map, which can be clicked to enlarge. Flickr takes the concept further with “places”, a kind of cross between the map and groups.

Camera tossing – experimental photography for the brave – CC mikecpeck

Special interest/experimental photography

Among the countless Flickr groups, there are some that push the boundaries of photography with amazing and inspiring photographic techniques and creative ideas. Some are deep and intellectually challenging, some are fun and creative, others are just simply hilarious. As a photographer, being able to explore exciting new ideas and experiments is incredibly liberating, challenging and fun. Once you start to dabble with experimental photography, you can share what you have done with others doing the same, and you’ll get invaluable feedback to help you become better and better. For the true trailblazers, you can share your own original ideas and you’re bound to find others who like what you do. No longer must you languish in obscurity, entertaining only yourself, if you wish, you can have an audience of thousands.

Third party tools and plugins

I love that Flickr has opened up access to their data and our accounts, to allow third party developers to give us awesome tools and features that go beyond the standard Flickr features. My personal favourite is the Flickr Tag wordpress plugin. Almost every image displayed on my blog in the last year has used this plugin, and the weekly feature posts on this blogs Flickr group would be an absolute pain to make without it. I’m also just starting to play with the Nintens Flickr gadget, that provides stats on my group. There are so many more that just blow me away, such as Flickr DNA, FlickrSLiDR and Flickr Colr Pickr.

It’s free

Sure, I have a pro account, but Flickr does almost everything for free, almost all of the features are available to anyone who signs up. When you might want to pay for Flickr is when you start to get into it more seriously. For free you can upload as many photos as you want, but only the most recent 200 will stay visible in your photo stream. But frankly, the cost of a pro account, $24.95USD is really not a lot of money for what you get. Just look at how many users have the “PRO” image next to their names.

Next up?

I’ve complained and I’ve praised, and that’s all well and good. Not much will come of it however. Next time I talk about Flickr, I plan to list 10 Suggestions to Improve Flickr.