Flickr – How I’m Using It Today

Back in February I wrote about how I was going to double my efforts with Flickr.

A fair amount has happened since then – personally and globally – so here’s an update on how I’m using Flickr today, based on the five points in my previous post.

1. Linking photos to the Flickr original on 35hunter

I do this with every photo, unless it’s a screenshot of stats or a picture of a camera that I don’t want on my public Flickr photostream.

Whilst I try to display photos here within 35hunter posts at a large enough size that the reader can appreciate, I also like giving the option to view larger and in the Lightbox in Flickr (just press L), as close to full screen as you can get.

One of my frustrations with some sites is how tiny the images are presented. Photography is all about the visuals, so why isn’t this being optimised?

With certain social media channels, you’re restrained by the platform’s limitations and format. This is one reason I gave up Instagram.

Less understandable to me though, is why the authors of some blogs – where you can make the images as big as you want with your choice of theme, columns etc – choose to have a very narrow main column, and even then don’t post the images at full width.

So they look small on a decent laptop or desktop screen and positively piddly on a tablet or phone. Why are you making it so difficult for us to appreciate your work?

I digress.

2. Linking to specific 35hunter posts in Flickr photo descriptions

I have done this a little, but have found few opportunities.

The most obvious occasions are when I might have a post on 35hunter about a particular lens or camera, then a picture of it on Flickr, where I can include a link to the blog post in the Flickr description too.

Also, my reluctance to make either 35hunter or my Flickr too gear-centric (I want to be a photographer, not a collector) means this isn’t something I’ll be doing week in week out anyway.

3. Seeking out more photographers on Flickr

My intention was to find active – and dormant – Flickr photographers whose work I enjoy. I have had some success in this area.

Simon’s Utak provides some delicious shallow depth of field photograph, plus occasional gear posts in areas I enjoy (M42, Pentax).

Amanda Lazaruk shares a mixture of intriguing self portraits, and moody wilderness landscapes.

Florence Richerataux brings us very beautiful, romantic and dreamy images, the type I might make in a parallel universe where I was born a girl. In addition I gather Florence uses an array of lovely vintage lenses, again someone after my own heart.

I’ve been following Lauren Rushing for as long as I can remember on Flickr, and whilst she doesn’t post much, I still enjoy her older images like this which have such a youthful, dreamy feel. As with blogs, even those no longer very active can contain years of archives still worth exploring, in much the same way as we can find a new (to us) author and enjoy their work, even though they may have written it 10, 20, 50, or 100 or more years ago.

Oh, plus the Abandoned Group which feeds my affection for broken down, rusted out, crumbling, and, well, abandoned, places.

This is certainly an area I would like to explore more, there are still others out there making gorgeous images and sharing them via Flickr – and those archives we can stumble upon, as I just mentioned.

4. Adding more photos to my favourites

This has naturally followed on from the point above, and particular photos by those I follow that I especially like, I’ve added to my favourites. It doesn’t matter how old the images are, if I love them, I love them.

Another avenue for this is through searching Flickr images via camera and lens.

I’m back in a DSLR phase currently, which means using lenses – usually vintage ones – and so further explorations around these and others often lead to new images to add to my favourites.

The Camera Finder feature is always great fun too, especially as it contains so many cameras from the golden era of digital.

5. Commenting more on Flickr

This is something I have done a little more, and the quality of conversation among the few I follow makes it worthwhile. In other words, it’s similar to the comments threads here on 35hunter.

I think one positive about Flickr being less populated these days is that spammy and pointless comments are much fewer. So you can get to the genuine conversation more easily.

So Flickr remains an important part of my online life, especially with my recently pared down and rebooted online reading approach.

How about you? How are you using Flickr? Do you have an alternative photography sharing site you prefer? 

Please let us know in the comments below (and don’t forget to tick the “Notify me of new comments via email” box to follow the conversation).

Thanks for looking.

What Next?

Share this post with someone you think will enjoy it using the buttons below.

Read a random post from the archives.

See what I’m up to About Now.