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 mugleyAmazing 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.
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 mikecpeckSpecial 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.
Flickr has changed the way I share photos online, and has made building my blog and the community around it that much easier. But there are some things about Flickr, and the people that use it, that really get on my nerves. I want to get these off my chest, but don’t be to offended if I pick on your way of doing things, it’s not personal :)
Poetry in photo descriptions
If I like your photo, I want to know more about it. I don’t want to read death metal lyrics or emo goth poetry. It’s pretentious, it’s lazy, and it’s unfortunately become cliche. Please do us a favour and tell us your thoughts about your photo. They’ll be more personal and more relevant.
One or two word comments
On the flip side, a little more thought about comments on others’ photos would really be appreciated as well. Frankly, I don’t care if you think my photo’s “Awesome!”, I care even less if you think it’s a “Cool photo”. I’ve put a lot of work into it, I’d genuinely like to know what you think of it and why. If you’re going to comment, why not take the extra 30 seconds, engage your brain, and say something insightful.
Space separated tags
As far as I know, the standard way of delineating keywords (what your parents called “tags”) in all metadata is with commas. So why did Flickr have to use spaces, and quotes around tag strings? Now whenever I want to transfer keywords from one app to another, I have to strip out the commas and add quotes. And I’ve lost count how many times I’ve had to re-enter Flickr tags when I forget not to use commas.
Overdone HDR
Yes, it’s amazing what you can do with processing software these days. Yes, it’s cool to see detail in the sky and in the shade. Yes, HDR has a place in artistic photography. But for goodness sake, please stop with the over-saturated, flat, dirty, haloed, massively compressed dynamic range novelty photos you can’t seem to get enough of. Very rarely is the HDR “effect” a successful artistic statement in itself. Good HDR is usually invisible. Subtlety is your friend.
Disrespectful comments on artistic nudes
The human body is the most beautiful thing in this world, and a truly skillful photographer can capture that in a photo. It takes talent, technical mastery and an understanding of beauty to make an artistic nude photo. It also takes courage, patience and great communication for a model to make it work, in partnership with the photographer. So please! Show some damn respect! No one wants to know what you want to do to the model. And what on Earth do you think sharing your lustful thoughts will get you anyway? It’s not like the model’s going to call you because you demeaned and degraded her with your filthy fantasies. For goodness sake, grow up!
Gaudy large banners and “awards”
How wonderful, fifteen users loved my photo so much they awarded it the “Most Awesometastic Flickr Masterpiece Photo Award”, complete with a giant sparkling, shiny, flashing banner. And yet they didn’t say anything about the photo? Really, I don’t give a damn about your invented ‘awards’, and I really hate the comments on my photo getting clogged up with huge icons that look like they were stolen from a circa 1998 web site. Martin Gommel, a friend and much respected photographer says it best: “Please do not add any badges, banners or awards. I know that finding the right words isn’t easy, just try it, I believe in you ;)”
Comments that are only group invites
I have a little more patience with group invites on my photos, IF they are: relevant, subtle and accompanied by a personal, considered comment on the photo. But if you want to spam your group by copy/pasting an ad, especially one with a banner, without adding anything thoughtful to the comments, then you can be sure I’ll ignore the invite, and probably avoid your group in the future. The same goes if you pollute the comments on others’ photos. You’re only advertising your group as something I want to avoid.
Vignette
Almost as bad as overdone HDR, this cliche post-processing trick is a fad that needs to die. I hope you realise that vignette was originally a defect in cameras, and we can be grateful we don’t have to suffer it willingly now. Like HDR, it can be done well. Skillfully applied, vignette can evoke a certain mood, closeness, or age, and can direct the eye into the composition. Unfortunately it’s rarely done skillfully. I swear some people run ALL their photos through a Photoshop vignette action before uploading. By the way, if your photos have vignette because you’re experimenting with older cameras that generate their own vignette – Awesome! You rock :)
Culling? What’s that?
Just because you can take hundreds of photos of the same thing, doesn’t mean you have to share it with the world. That gorgeous photo of a bowl of strawberries, doesn’t look so gorgeous after the tenth nearly identical photo. I take as many photos as anyone, maybe more, but the idea behind that is to cull all but the very best. It’s one of the secrets to looking like a good photographer. If you upload them all, you’re letting the secret out, and everyone will know you just got lucky with one of the shots. That is, if they’re not bored to tears and leave before they get to that one great shot in twenty.
No reply notification on comments or discussion
This is without a doubt, my biggest Flickr peeve. The thing that makes Flickr so attractive, and so successful, is the incredible community that has built up around it. Flickr have done a lot of great things to encourage the free exchange of ideas and images, like groups, maps, discussion boards, photo pools etc. But when it comes to communicating between users, they’ve really dropped the ball.
When I make a comment on someones photo, sometimes I’ll ask a question, or I’d like to see what others have to say. But what if I forget to check it later? Well tough luck, I’ll never know. This is a problem with one photo, but I comment on hundreds! There’s no way I’ll ever be able to follow up on all the comments I’ve made. Yes, I’m aware of the “Comments you’ve made” feature, but it’s clunky at best. This problem is even worse in group discussions. With no reply notification, no one knows when a thread has been updated, and very quickly, a discussion group can end up looking like a ghost town.
There’s a critical mass for a community (for example a Flickr group) to be successful. That critical mass can be achieved a LOT sooner if the community members are able to easily and quickly respond to new discussion amongst members. Forum software developers know this, and subscriptions and notifications are essential included features even on the most basic software packages. There’s even a comment notification plugin for wordpress.
Flickr would do well to encourage the development of communities by enabling reply notification. If they did, you would surely see a rapid snowball effect as people spend more time replying to comments and discussions, which in turn would bring more people online to reply to those, and while they’re there, reply to others that they have yet to participate in. This positive feedback loop would result in a rapid growth of traffic, and a greater “pull” for new people to sign up, so they can participate. Surely Flickr wants more members and more active members?
From a purely selfish perspective, I want to know when people reply to my comments, and as the admin of the group Learning Photography with Neil Creek, I want to reach critical mass sooner rather than later.
Come on Flickr, pull your finger out.
It’s not all bad of course. You can read my post about the “10 things I love about Flickr (and its users)“.
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10 Things I Love About Flickr (And its Users)
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.