Flickr

[willie_901]

Based on this thread I guess I should be happy 22 of my 39 Flickr photos that made it to Explore have been dropped as their algorithm has evolved. And, that my last Expored phot was in 2009.

Anyway, I noticed most of the drops happened when Flickr made geotagging an important part of the criterea.

Like most popularity contests, you have to work hard at promoting yourself and doing what other people like rather than what you like.

High School never ends.

[Cron]

sometimes I visit "explore of the day", normally I just take a look at my contact's pictures and some groups, sometimes I leave a comment ...

[dogbunny]

Originally Posted by willie_901

Based on this thread I guess I should be happy 22 of my 39 Flickr photos that made it to Explore have been dropped as their algorithm has evolved. And, that my last Expored phot was in 2009.

Anyway, I noticed most of the drops happened when Flickr made geotagging an important part of the criterea.

Like most popularity contests, you have to work hard at promoting yourself and doing what other people like rather than what you like.

High School never ends.

Yep, call it flickr or RFF, or buttcheese.com It's all the same.

[Gabriel M.A.]

Mistaking flickr for a "photography site" is like mistaking Facebook for a "chat room site", or The Sun's website for a "site for journalism".

Some people post some of their portfolio on flickr, just like some people have a business front on Facebook. That some people do something and mistaking the whole for them is really where "the problem" is.

Explore used to be a good barometer, and in the past few years it's just been gamed, like most anything else -- Google searches, for example. Not knowing how to make a good Google search does not make Google garbage, it just makes garbage very evident and one must learn how to filter through.

Take the W/NW threads, for example. There is a lot of image noise in those; some people have more common sense than others as far as the number of images per post, the size of the posts, adherence to theme, etc. It doesn't make it "utter garbage".

Without a heavy hand, democracy rules, and it becomes its own tyranny. No democratic system is perfect, and one must remain vigilant, otherwise you just become dismissive. Making the system even worserer (so to speakerer).

[Peter_wrote:]

am i the only one here, who likes flickr?

of course it is not a curated gallery!

you have to choose for yourself, what you wanna watch. so a reason for me not to use it, would be that there is just 100% crap.
but there are indeed a lot of passionated good photographers, who put their stuff on flickr.

i dont watch the explored photos, because i have recognised, that in generally they don't hit my taste.

but i follow the photostreams of my contacts. so its an easy way to see their work without going to a lot of different personal websites.
i also like to watch the favorites of them and to explore to me new photographers.
with flickr i also avoid flash, which is so happily used on many personal photo websites.

so i think its a well programmed site, with some nice features and not too much advertisement.

[Gabriel M.A.]

Originally Posted by aperture64

I'm wondering what the alternative to Flickr is for the people that don't use it, or use it for "cloud" storage or consider it a dumping ground?

Flickr was meant to be a "photo sharing site", just like Picasa. Given its Groups it became its own monster, but it still remains a photo sharing site. Any photo sharing site is an alternative to flickr for doing just that.

It is not "cloud storage" (there's another term that gets mangled/misunderstood), anymore than Facebook would be "cloud storage" (neither are).

There's 500px, for example, which is geared only towards photography and has some social-media-based rating algorithms, but it hasn't lost its focus (at least not yet because no corporation has bought them out and stripped its soul and made it fit into something it wasn't meant to be, like Yahoo did with Flickr). It has "free" (limited) space, and it has subscription-based unlimited-with-caveats space accounts.

[Bingley]

Originally Posted by Peter_wrote:

am i the only one here, who likes flickr?

of course it is not a curated gallery!

you have to choose for yourself, what you wanna watch. so a reason for me not to use it, would be that there is just 100% crap.
but there are indeed a lot of passionated good photographers, who put their stuff on flickr.

i dont watch the explored photos, because i have recognised, that in generally they don't hit my taste.

but i follow the photostreams of my contacts. so its an easy way to see their work without going to a lot of different personal websites.
i also like to watch the favorites of them and to explore to me new photographers.
with flickr i also avoid flash, which is so happily used on many personal photo websites.

so i think its a well programmed site, with some nice features and not too much advertisement.

+1. I use flickr the same way. There are ad hoc communities of photographers on flickr who follow and comment on each others work - not all that different than RFF, except the thumbnails on flickr are larger and easier to see. A lot of my flickr contacts are also members here (but not all). Frankly, I think flickr is what you make it.

[mdarnton]

I don't find the photography on Flickr to be any worse than any other location. It has a broader spectrum of types of photography, but in general these days anyone who owns a camera thinks they're a photographer, and that isn't just a Flickr situation.

[Sanders McNew]

Originally Posted by aperture64

[snip]
I have to agree with Elliott Erwitt when he said that he doesn't like digital photography because it made photography accessible to the masses, therefore diluted the quality of photography.

Elliott Erwitt be damned: No one gets to decide that
photography remain the province of the self-annointed
Talented Ones. Photography is expression. Like it or
not, the digital age has democratized all forms of
expression. Publishing, music, photography, thought,
all avenues are now open to all.

The people in this thread castigate Flickr for being an
unfiltered stream of collective self-expression. I
cherish it for exactly that reason.

www.flickr.com/sandersnyc

[Bingley]

I should also add that there are numerous curated groups on flickr, some of which are quite selective, if not downright picky, in terms of photos the administrators will accept, the number of photos one can post, content and technique restrictions, etc.

There are also many groups for photographers with shared interests in subject matter and technique. I've seen a lot of good photos in these groups.

[shadowfox]

Don't complain about flickr if you are not willing to use searching filters and tags.
You know it's a massive database of photos.
You know that good photos are not found in the majority.

And good luck finding a better alternative; I've tried, and unless I want to make that my day job, I gave up.

Btw, I agree, Explore is a waste of time. But *a lot* of people like to waste time. If you don't, ignore it.

[thirtyfivefifty]

While I recognize that there's a lot of photos to filter through on "explore", it doesn't turn me off from "exploring" via flickriver. I know what to expect from explore, but more importantly, I know what interests me, but that doesn't mean others are interested in the same thing. Most of my friends on Flickr don't put up any serious photographs. It's merely, as someone mentioned before, a cloud to store photographs on, most of which aren't serious to begin with. In fact, none of them are "serious" photographers to begin with. Not even close! As for me, when I "explore", I'm NOT looking for "shots" but rather consistant photographers. When I open photographs in a new tab to examine the quality of their photostream and find something pleasing and fresh to my eyes, it makes the hunt worth it. This is why I stick with Flickr rather than 500px (which in my eyes looks all the same). There are a bunch of GREAT photographers out there, most of which are overlooked.

[MCTuomey]

Pics of pretty people will always get clicks. Flickr's no exception, how could it be?

I like my flickr contacts, have met some talented folks whose comments I value, will continue to use it.

Our planet is a dumping ground, doesn't mean parts of it aren't beautiful.

[mdarnton]

I like to follow out the people I like--look at what they like, and then look at that person's stuff, etc. It's a good way to find new people. You can stay wide of the junk that way, too.

[tom.w.bn]

Originally Posted by aperture64

I have to agree with Elliott Erwitt when he said that he doesn't like digital photography because it made photography accessible to the masses, therefore diluted the quality of photography.

Did he really say this? What an elitist chatter.

[rjbuzzclick]

Other than here, flickr is the only place I post photos. I don't shoot professionally and it's a good, easy, and quick way for me to display some work. I've also "met" and met (in person) several folks whose work I admire and it's an easy way to follow them.

The one thing I don't understand is photostreams with thousands and thousands of photos in them. Does anyone look through ALL of them? I've limited myself to the free account which caps me at 200 images. As I add images, I delete others. Deciding which photos to delete is an interesting process. I have my favorites which sometimes don't get the response I expect them to, and other images that get more reactions than I would expect. Ultimately, I decide what stays or goes, but I do find this feedback valuable as I try to evaluate my own work and find ways I'd like to improve it.

Having said all that, one of my flickr contacts has 26,568 photos in his stream as of today. In his case, I don't see that number as excessive. He travels to many vintage car and motorcycle shows and his photostream filled with fantastic, clear photos of many rare and classic vehicles. It's a great online resource.

Oh, and obviously I've never been Explored and most likely never will be. I'm fine with that.

[bhop73]

I think you people calling it a "dumping ground" or "not a photography site" or whatever, are basing your opinions solely on the explore section, or maybe just don't know how to use it properly.

There are still thousands of 'serious' photographers on there, with good work. It's like any community, it'll have a mix of good and bad. Once you find some of the good ones, it's easy to find more by following their contacts or favorites, or by searching for groups that you're interested in.

Originally Posted by shadowfox

Don't complain about flickr if you are not willing to use searching filters and tags.
You know it's a massive database of photos.
You know that good photos are not found in the majority.

And good luck finding a better alternative; I've tried, and unless I want to make that my day job, I gave up.

Btw, I agree, Explore is a waste of time. But *a lot* of people like to waste time. If you don't, ignore it.

That pretty much sums it up IMO.

[Peter Wijninga]

If any platform has boosted the global sharing of pictures which would otherwise lie in the sock drawer, it's Flickr. If you think it's all bad -which it isn't, do you own thing. Cheers, Peter

[drew.saunders]

If you think flickr tastes are odd, tumblr links to flickr photos is even stranger. A while back, someone posted a link to one of my flickr photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/drew_saunders/5972419952/) on his tumblr page. It's a ship model in a church on the Big Island of Hawai'i. I think either his late father was very fond of ship models, and this photo made him think of his father, or his late father was very fond of this particular model in this church. Anyway, the number of re-links and hits that this photo has gotten astonishes me, and those are just the ones I see of people properly linking instead of just stealing the image. It's just a ship model! I think I did a reasonable job of the framing with the 24mm lens and didn't completely bugger the exposure, but still, it's not all that special!

It's true, if you want lots of looks, then pretty girls, puppies, kittens and food seem to be popular. If you got a pretty girl feeding French macarons to her puppy or kitten, you'd have a million hits per hour.

[j.scooter]

I found the decline in quality on Flickr coincided with the 500px gain in popularity.

[Ming The Merciless]

Could someone explain the meaning of HDR. It's been used in this discussion but I don't know what it means. Thanks.

[Bill58]

When I was uploading the other day using the flickr uploader, it gave me double image uploads. How weird! I'm not the most PC proficient guy around, so did I do something wrong?

Anybody else had that problem?

[peterm1]

I find that with Flickr the secret lies in the Groups you subscribe to.

There is a lot of junk in Flickr. It is easy to join and the first 200 uploads are free - so that virtually guarantees that everyone with an Iphone who has taken a photo of their pet cat or baby will use it. But if you selectively search for interesting high quality Groups you will find a much higher proportion of good quality images.

One particular thing I like about Flickr is that its easy to post your photos on Groups and that beings traffic to your Flickr page. Similarly you can link to specific people when you find a photographer you like. Flickr allows you to name them as a contact / friend and find their images again in future. This is also a great way of avoiding rubbish on Flicker as its easy to browse images and I usually do this through Groups / Contacts I am interested in.

( Searching is a bit of a different issue - perhaps partly because of the huge quantity of images on the site. But I think it goes further than that - I always use meta data on my images but even then Flickr's search function seems to have trouble finding my images / metadata even if I know that the meta data I have used it pretty unique. Thats one downside of Flickr - which is more of a technical limitation. )

I also like the way people who view my images can post comments or link to my images by naming them as favourites. This keeps people coming to my pages and giving me feedback which helps my photography and my motivation.

Flickr also gives stats. The stats tell me I have had 40,000 hits on my images over the past 3 years or so. Not bad but chicken feed compared to some peoples' hit rate. I find that is both gratifying and useful to know.

So all in all I do not knock Flickr. I find its not a bad site for my purposes and in particular it brings quite a lot of traffic to my photos simply because there are a lot of people who are interested in photography who are members. Of course the price you pay is that not all of these are Robert Capas or Henri Cartier Bressons and hence I cannot guarantee that I will be interested or impressed with all of their photos.

In other words, yes there is a lot of crap.

(THINKS----------Wonder if cavemen in the ice age were saying this about cave paintings? "Hey I just had a look at Oggs cave - has the walls all painted and its utter garbage. All those spray silhouettes of hands. No imagination. No paintings of buffalo or sabre tooth tigers. And you should just see the over saturated HDR stuff he puts out - all the same and probably made with that cheap consumer ochre that you find down by the river."

[Araakii]

Crap is a relative term. Every 6 months I find a lot of the stuff I uploaded 6 months ago were crap (which of course I didn't realize at the time). So while we look at some of other people's stuff and think they are crap, someone else better than us is saying the same thing about our images.

[maddoc]

Except for the quite restricted layout possibilities of flickr (I also use pbase with more possibilities in changing the layout) it seems to me the best compromise of photo-sharing site and photo-related discussion in the groups. The groups on flickr are really helpful and I have often found very informative tips in of their discussion boards.

On the other hand, I hardly ever look at the Explore of flickr because I am not interested into the majority of photos that make it into Explore.