Our last pho­tog­ra­phy work­shop dis­cussed the online pho­to host­ing site, Flickr and here are the notes I pre­pared:

In addi­tion to host­ing pic­tures from pho­tog­ra­phers around the world, Flickr also func­tions as an online com­mu­ni­ty and a social net­work­ing site and can be used to meet oth­er pho­tog­ra­phers that share your inter­ests. Keep in mind that Flickr’s pri­ma­ry func­tion is to dis­play your pic­tures and you can choose what oth­ers see or how much you inter­act with any­one else. In short, it is noth­ing like Face­book, no one is bug­ging you to be their friend and there are no ads when view­ing your pic­tures, even for the free accounts. There is one ad on the free account when you go to your Flickr home page, but it is small.

Accord­ing to Wikipedia, as of June, 2009, Flickr hosts 3.6 bil­lion pic­tures. It was start­ed by Ludi­cor in Cana­da in 2004 and bought by Yahoo in 2005. At that time, all con­tent was moved to the Unit­ed States and is now sub­ject to US laws. It is cur­rent­ly the most pop­u­lar pho­to host­ing site.

There are both free and Pro accounts avail­able. The free account lim­its your pic­ture upload to 100 megabytes a month. The Pro account cost $25 for a year and allows you unlim­it­ed uploads. You can upload video, all accounts are lim­it­ed to 90 sec­onds for each movie and pro accounts may upload High Def­i­n­i­tion video.

A note on the upload lim­it – if you have a free account, do not direct­ly down­load pic­tures from your 10 megapix­el cam­era into Flickr. Learn to use soft­ware to reduce your image files to a much small­er size while retain­ing pic­ture qual­i­ty. This will allow you to upload many more pic­tures tak­ing full advan­tage of your free account. And select only your best pic­tures to upload. Leave the blurred and dupli­cate pic­tures out. You wouldn’t put those blurred pic­tures in your pho­to album.

A Yahoo ID is required to join. If you do not have a Yahoo ID, Flickr makes it easy for you to com­plete the form to get one.

Flickr is used by ama­teur and pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers as a quick and easy way to share their work with friends, fam­i­ly and clients. Blog­gers use it as an easy place to store pho­tos to use on their blogs and to allow oth­ers to use for web con­tent or print­ing.

I find Flickr very easy to use and con­fig­ure to my spec­i­fi­ca­tions. You con­trol all pri­va­cy set­tings for pho­tos, whether the gen­er­al pub­lic can see them or just friends and fam­i­ly who are mem­bers. You can send guest pass­es to non mem­bers to see pic­tures you list­ed as pri­vate. You have some con­trol over how your gallery appears to oth­ers. You can orga­nize your pho­tos into sets and col­lec­tions. And there is plen­ty of assis­tance pro­vid­ed by Flickr to help you get the most out of your page.

Cen­sor­ship (what you see) defaults to the strictest lev­el, suit­able for minors. You can adjust what you allow your­self to view from there.

There are few restric­tions to what peo­ple can post. This is reg­u­lat­ed only by the coun­try from which you are view­ing. Ger­many and Chi­na have very strict restric­tions on what their cit­i­zens may view on Flickr.

Beyond pub­lish­ing my pho­tos, I find real val­ue view­ing the work of oth­ers. If you seek to improve your pho­tog­ra­phy, look­ing at and ana­lyz­ing oth­er pho­tos is an excel­lent way to learn. Some peo­ple fol­low their own course and pre­fer not to be influ­enced by oth­er work. More pow­er to them. I find oth­er work very inter­est­ing, edu­ca­tion­al and inspir­ing and find Flickr is an excel­lent source for help and ideas.

Groups – Search out groups with­in Flickr, there are thou­sands of them, each with a spe­cif­ic theme in mind and thou­sands of peo­ple con­tribute to these groups every­day. If you need inspi­ra­tion or want to learn a new tech­nique, vis­it a group with a theme that inter­ests you. You can view the pho­tos by select­ing from thumb­nails or run a slideshow of the entire pool. Again, look­ing at and eval­u­at­ing other’s work is a great way to fur­ther your abil­i­ties.

Some great groups to vis­it are “The Com­mons” and “Explore”. The Com­mons hosts pho­tos with no known copy­right restric­tions and is filled with pic­tures from the Library of Con­gress, the Smith­son­ian Insti­tute and many inter­na­tion­al libraries, muse­ums and col­leges. Explore hosts “most linked to” and “most viewed pic­tures” and rep­re­sents an amaz­ing col­lec­tion of ran­dom work from around the world. I also enjoy a group called “Light Junkies”, a col­lec­tion of light draw­ing and long expo­sure pho­tog­ra­phy. Use the search engine at the top of the page to locate your inter­ests.

The Com­mons is here: http://www.flickr.com/commons/
Explore is here: http://www.flickr.com/explore/
Light Junkies is here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/lightjunkies/
Here is one for the Gold­en Gate Bridge: http://www.flickr.com/groups/ggb/

Inter­act — You can com­ment or add over­lay notes on any pic­ture which the own­er allows com­ments. You can join groups, add your pho­tos, join in on dis­cus­sions in each group’s forums and receive feed­back on your pic­tures. Tag your pho­tos with key words to help you sort through your pho­tos and to help oth­ers dis­cov­er you too. Com­ment­ing and receiv­ing feed­back can enhance everyone’s expe­ri­ence and pro­vide valu­able insight.

Pro­tect Your­self – You knew it sound­ed too good to be true, but actu­al­ly, it’s not so bad. There are a few things you should con­sid­er when you post pic­tures online. Post­ed pic­tures can be copied. Every dig­i­tal pic­ture con­tains data such as when the pic­ture was tak­en and the cam­era set­tings. It can hold your name and con­tact infor­ma­tion to pro­tect your copy­right priv­i­leges. You should make sure that your con­tact infor­ma­tion is embed­ded in each pho­to you post. This gives you some form of copy­right pro­tec­tion and gives oth­ers the abil­i­ty to con­tact you if need­ed. The only way to com­plete­ly be sure your work is nev­er copied is to nev­er post it. So, you need a lev­el of trust to par­tic­i­pate in the fun.

Obey the rules – Be aware that Flickr main­tains the right to delete your account and all the pic­tures at any time for any rea­son. There have been a few com­plaints and dis­putes but there are usu­al­ly facts miss­ing from what I have read. These prob­lems are rare. The rules are not unrea­son­able. Stay in the bound­aries and keep copies of your pic­tures on your own com­put­er.

Spend time set­ting up your Flickr pro­file. There are some copy­right set­tings there too. That is where you deter­mine who can see your pic­tures and if they can com­ment on them.

Flickr makes it easy to view var­i­ous sizes of your pic­ture, embed them into web pages and share them via email. It goes on and on and new fea­tures are insti­tut­ed all the time. I use Flickr every­day, enjoy the inter­ac­tion, learn from oth­ers and (until I find some­thing gross­ly wrong) rec­om­mend it to every­one. Have Fun!

Ref­er­ence: Derek Sto­ry pro­duced a pod­cast (#175) on the Dig­i­tal­sto­ry web­site enti­tled “Top 10 Flickr tips”. Check it out.