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Entry: I'm a Flickr Fiend! Oct 29, 2006

Flickr! The Greatest Thing Since…Before Flickr!

Oh how I swoon for thee Flickr!

I post my photos – faster – quickr

I am obsessed…all the people snickr

I’ll take photos of everything

From a basket of wickr to a clock (called a tickr)

You cannot stop me!

And that is the kickr

Just try it yourself, there’s no need to bickr

Be a camera clickr!

Whether you’re a nose pickr, city slickr, or even boot lickr

Sharing photos is slickr with Flickr!

Remember the days when your neighbors would come home from their big vacation to Yellowstone, then invite you over for a slide show consisting of 500 out of focus shots of Old Faithful and the three bison they saw? Or maybe you’ve known someone that pulled out the latest 15 photos of their three-month-old grandchild every time you ran into them at the grocery store. You patiently looked at the photos, and told them how delightfully they captured the rising steam of the geyser or that their grandchild looks just like them. You were being polite, and did your best not to offend them with your indifference. People love to share their photos, and more than anything like the acknowledgement they receive when others look at them. After all, it’s an acknowledgement of their life; a validation of their existence.

Today people love to share their photos more than ever. As digital photography overtakes film as the most popular means of capturing the views of the world around us, the methods of sharing have changed dramatically. People still print photos to send to friends and family, or to fill up photo albums and scrapbooks. They might make a disc of their favorites and send that out. However, online sharing of photos is probably the most satisfactory method of sharing large quantities – and Flickr has risen above all others as the best place to store and share photos. I like to think of Flickr as an online scrapbook of sorts.

Flickr has become so much more than your average site to store photos. In just two short years since it was launched it has become a major player in what is called Web 2.0, or the Living Web. Very simply put, Web 2.0 is the new generation of websites that allow extensive input and collaboration between users – like Subter does! Blogging, online link storage sites (del.icio.us), RSS feeds, and podcasts are all contributors to this new era of the internet.

What makes Flickr so great? Why do people enjoy it so much? You’d think it would be a simple matter of posting your photos, sharing a link to them with a few friends and family, and that’s it. That’s not it at all. Flickr has become an entire community of people that share an interest – photography. Skills range from rank amateur to highly acclaimed professional and you’ll find photos of just about everything you can imagine on Flickr. And I do mean everything. You’ll want to be a little careful if you have fragile sensibilities or small children in the room while you surf around Flickr. Mostly though you’ll just find a wide variety of beautiful, funny, and touching photos from people around the world. Not sure where to begin? Start with the Explore page, where each day 200 photos are highlighted. Once you start looking, you’ll no doubt be sucked in by the beauty and creativity that abounds.

People are starting to notice the endless pool of talent on Flickr, as can be witnessed by the recent solicitation of photos for the new Washington State Tourism website by design firm LEVYsheckler. Rather than hire professional photographers to go out and take photos, LEVYsheckler started a group on Flickr called SayWA and as the photos poured in, they selected many for use on the new site. True collaboration here - real photos by real people showing the features of the state, and real money for those whose photos were chosen. Indeed, I chose one of the photos for my March column by searching Flickr, contacting the photographer, and kindly asking his permission for use. I anticipate that more of this type of collaboration will occur as people see what Flickr users have to offer. It may or may not break any new world famous photographers, but it will give many amateurs the opportunity to share their work with a wider audience, and maybe even make a little bit of extra money along the way.

One reason that I find Flickr so appealing is the ease with which I can post photos to my blogs or other websites. Flickr provides an instant blogging interface in which you can choose a photo, write your text, then voila! One click and your post is live. Several different blog services work with Flickr, including Wordpress, TypePad, Moveable Type, and Bolger. If your blogging service doesn’t interface directly with Flickr, no need to worry. Each photo is resized automatically for you! Depending on the size of your original photo file, you may have up to six sizes to choose from, beginning with a 75x75 square (perfect for most avatar requirements) and on up to the original. For each size of photo you then have two link types to choose from – a static link, or a hotlink that leads back to your Flickr account. I’ve found it especially useful again and again, as in the past I would resize my own photos, upload them to Photobucket, and then post them. This is much easier.

Not only does Flickr provide built in applications for its users, more and more developers are creating practical and fun things for people to do with their photos. On the practical side, the new internet browser Flock has a built in uploading interface for sending your photos to Flickr. Just drag and drop your photos from your computer into the uploader, click send, and away they go. I found the Flock uploader to be a bit quicker than Flickr’s (and it didn’t bog down my computer), though you can’t pre-tag photos or put them into sets. Certainly useful for small numbers of photos, and perhaps in the future they will expand capabilities. As for fun fd’s Flickr Toys can keep one busy for hours, creating everything from motivation posters to magazine covers to mosaics with your photos (and the photos of others).

You may have caught the implication from my poetic wonder above that I am somewhat obsessed with Flickr. Yes, I will admit it is true. While some folks spend their hours crafting a MySpace account, I on the other hand, obsessively check for comments on my photos, or to see if the order of my top 200 photos has changed. Flickr is manna for statistics whores. There. I’ve said it. If you concern yourself with how many people read or comment on your blog, for instance, you’ll looooove Flickr. They kindly keep track of your photostream visitors (I’m at 15,852 as of this writing), and the top 200 photos in four categories: views, comments, favorites (other people marking your photo as a favorite), and interestingness. As activity occurs on your photos, you can check in and see how they are doing. But how, you ask, do you create activity on your photos? Heh, heh, heh. This can occur several ways. Of course, if you are very fortunate, your photo will turn up on the Explore page and automatically have hundreds if not thousands of views. Since this is fairly unlikely most days, the next best method is to collect lots of contacts (other Flickr users) and post your photos to as many different groups as possible. As you travel around the site, you will undoubtedly come across other users whose photos you particularly like. You can choose these people as contacts, and as they post new photos you will be able to view them in a constantly updated stream. Likewise, as people mark you as a contact, they will see your photos.

The second way in which to increase traffic to your photos is by joining groups. As you can imagine, there are groups for nearly every topic in the world, and if by some chance you can’t find a group you can start one! One of the biggest questions is do you find groups for the photos you have, or join groups that sound interesting and then take photos to fit. I tend to do a little bit of both. Standard topics like flowers and cats and dogs have groups, but you can also find slightly more esoteric things like moss or hinges represented. Not strange enough for you? How about Remains of the Meal or Dirty Water? Other groups are based on themes, such as Beauty is Simple, and require definite creative effort on the photographer’s part. Still other groups have strict posting requirements – number of views/posts/comments – and don’t you dare break those rules or the moderators will kick you out! The funniest group I’ve found is Stick Figures in Peril – full of the craziest warning signs you’ll ever see. My favorite group, however, has to be the Monthly Scavenger Hunt. Each month the moderators post a list of 20 items or themes for the participants to collect in images. Group members can rate entries throughout the month (with a very slick voting program) and at the end of the month the top three photos in each category are posted. Searching for the photos is fun, but the best part about this group is definitely the people involved. They have been the friendliest, funniest, and all around most eccentric crew I’ve had fortune to run across on Flickr. I fit in nicely.

I suppose more than anything Flickr appeals to both the voyeur and exhibitionist in each of us. We can catch a glimpse into the lives of people around the world, provided freely for all to see. At the same time, we can choose to share a glimpse into our own lives. Perhaps it will help bring us just a little bit closer together as human beings. Funny, isn’t it? People in all parts of the world love the same things. They love their families, their pets, and the beauty of the world around them. They take photos, and they want to share them with anyone that will take the time to look. In the end, everybody just wants a little acknowledgement and validation.

Resources

Flickr - http://www.flickr.com/

All users may have a free account with Flickr, which allows them to upload 20MB of photos per month. Only the top 200 photos will be displayed to viewers. For a small fee of $24.95 per year, users may upgrade to a Pro account which allows 2GB of uploads per month and unlimited ad-free storage and viewing.