I told you that during the last weeks I have spent a lot of time on Flickr . I have been a member of Flickr since April 2005, but it took me some time to really get enthusiastic about this “online photos management and sharing application”.
I thought for my entry of today I might make a list of what I like about Flickr and how I use it ( even though I guess that most people have formed their own impressions and opinions of Flickr by now):
- Flickr helps me organize my photos . Digital photos tend to become quite a lot - since June 2004 I have amassed about 2000 photos. Not all of them are good (but I am bad at throwing things away) and of course there are offline desktop applications (some even for Linux
to sort and store and manage your photos. I found Flickr easy: I put my best photos there (so far more than 400), I sort them in sets or arrange for the date taken and I have an easy-to-use way to keep an eye on them. By tagging and titling it is easy to retrieve them and I can access them from any place with an internet connection. In fact I tend to have a look at my photographic treasures almost anytime I am at a computer.
- Flickr helps me share (= show off my photos. People look at my photos, some tell me that they like them and why. There are discussions on possible improvements, on technique, on mistakes and shortcomings. Flickr lets me join “groups” where people are interested in the same photographic motives or use the same camera or like the same kind of photos they I like or use. That´s great. Flickr is a community where you meet interesting people who show themselves through their photos. And of course it is very motivating when people publish positive comments on your photos or nominate them as their favourites - two of my photos already even made it to Flickr´ s Explore group, where they present what they judge to be the 500 most interesting photos of each day.
- Flickr is like a great inspirational tool - I find tens of thousands of ideas for motives and perspectives and techniques. I find ideas of working over my photos with picture manipulation programs like Photoshop or - in my case - GIMP.
- Flickr makes it easy for me to “do more things” with my photos: third-party offers give me easy ways of getting calendars, posters or photo books out of my snaps. I just had a photobook printed for my father´s birthday and it really looks amazingly fine.
- Flickr has become an extension of my blog. I am trying to connect both worlds more and more (which Flickr supports by providing interfaces - “Flickr and blogs go together like Captain and Tennille.” ). I have a feeling that Hillside Meditations and my Flickr account are two sides of a coin that shows and chronicles this time in my life, my feelings, my thoughts, my personality. Hillside Meditations is more about words and writing, Flickr, of course, is more about my photographas, but I think they play together quite well. (Many members of Flickr seem to be bloggers, as well - and vice versa).
In my view Flickr is great fun. If you don´t know it yet and are interested in photography, you should at least check it out. (If you do not want to upload your own photos just browsing through Flickr´s pools of photos might be an idea .-)
Flickr, photo+management, photo+sharing, community
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