What is … Flickr?

Flickr - notice the spelling (no “e”) - is a social networking site for photographs. You can sign up for a free account and upload your photos. Once you have an account, you get a dedicated webpage address for your photos eg http://www.flickr.com/photos/yourchosenflickrpagename. You can give that link to anyone so they can go to view your photos there.

Public/ private

You can display all or some only of your photos as public (for anyone and everyone to see) or private (which only your friends and family can see). In order to for friends and family to see your private photos, they will need to sign up for their own Flickr account as well - that’s a bit more cumbersome than allowing the whole world to see your pics but then if privacy is important to you, then it’s worth those extra couple of steps for your friends and family.

People viewing your pictures can leave comments for each photo. You can turn comments off if your prefer.

Groups

You can set up a group with your family and friends so you can all pool your photographs.

There are also different public groups on Flickr that you can join. eg if you have photos all about cars, you could pool your car pics into a car group which will have photos by other car enthusiasts. If there isn’t already a group for cars or whatever theme you are passionate about, you can always start one of your own.

People are also using groups in creative ways. Here are some groups to explore:

I love this one - Stick Figures in Peril: photos of those warning signs showing stick figures in all kinds of terrible situations. It makes a nervous person like me feel that the whole world is a minefield of terror…

This one is brilliantly creative - Tell a Story in Five Frames: use five photos in sequence to tell a story. I featured some good short photo stories on my arts blog, Fusion View, in the post “Micro Photo Stories”

This one is starkly hypnotic - Urban Explorers: the invitation to post your photos here says. “photos and stories about abandoned paper mills, condmened hospitals, decaying barns, etc… please do not post typical cty pictures here.”

Creative Commons Licence

For bloggers, Flickr is a great resource for free photos to illustrate your posts. In the “Search” section, choose “Advanced Search” and click on the option to Search within Creative Commons-licensed photos and type in the keyword you want.

Creative Commons Licensed photos are those that their creators have offered to the world to use for free by clicking on the relevant Creative Commons Licence option within Flickr. The only condition is that you credit the creator and link back to the Flickr page where you got the photo. Note that you should check if there are any restrictions in the Creative Commons Licence restricting commercial use or changes to the original photo.

Many ways to upload your photos

There are a number of ways to upload your photos. You can go to the Flickr upload page and upload it 6 photos at a time from there. Or you can download the Flickr Uploader onto your desktop and upload loads and loads of photos all in one go. Or you can even upload photos by email from your email account or your mobile phone - Flickr gives you a dedicated email address to email the pics to.

Tags

Tags are handy labels you can give to your photos so you can easily find them again. You can also search other people’s public photos by tags to see, say, all pics tagged with “car” or “Malaysia” etc.

Free versus Pro Accounts

The free account allows you to upload up to 200 photos. There is also a monthly upload limit (based on megabytes per month). And you can only create 3 “sets” or folders.

The Flickr Pro Account costs US$47.99 for two years (or US$24.95 for one year). There is no limit to the number of photos you can upload nor any monthly limit. You can also create as many folders as you like.

Conclusion

I like Flickr and use it now for all my private photographs. The interface is a little bit complex and takes a bit of exploration and getting into the mindset of the people who designed the site. But overall, I find it a quick and easy way to sort and store my photos and also to share photos with my internationally-based family - there’s nothing like getting an update from my cousin in Australia and being able to see her photos on Flickr within minutes of her uploading them!