...and online sharing sites and communities.*
For either of my readers who MIGHT have been living under a rock, there's been controversy a plenty of late on flickr. This has given reason to ponder my flickr future.
Recently, flickr internationalised it's site. Bringing more language options into place. This turned out to be a double edged sword. It appears that flickr.de** imposed a level of censorship that put quite a few noses out of joint. As a consequence some of flickr's best European photographers have moved to ipermity.com. Censorship is not the only issue that has been bugging a few people, I know of one former flickrnaut, who was starting to get broken links elsewhere on the web because flickr was changing uri's. I personally recently suffered a minor irritation of the censorship variety. I also feel the 'sense' of community has been slowly declining over the past 15 or so months.
So while I ponder the future of my flickr account, I checked out ipernity.com, found some contacts in there and have been poking around blogging and generally getting a feel for the place.
In one of my blog posts over at ipernity, I mentioned how I'd learnt a few things about photography and online sharing community sites. So I thought I'd jot down a few thoughts about my time, nearly 3 years, of hanging around in the flickrverse. [Please bear in mind flickr is the first community that I've gotten involved in and felt I understood it machinations.]
- Less is more. Only upload what you consider your absolute best. If you are chasing some kind of notoriety, the quality of your images needs to impeccable. However, if you have an idea or pre-conception about your own work in a cyberspace context you may never be 'found' . If your ideas are not about what the hoi poloi consider to be a 'good' photographs, read sunsets, babies, macros etc here, attention will be scant. If you are not interested in some level of notoriety then upload at will, eventually all the right people will find you.
- Sex sells. Some of the most popular images on flickr are by women of themselves in flirtatious poses, often scantily clad. Erotic photography of women by men rates well too. By rates well I mean 1000's of views per image within a week or so of them being put online.
- Put Out. You only get out what you put in, unless you are gifted photographer with an eye that appeals to the hoi poloi. Again if you want interaction and dialog, then you've got to put out so to speak. This can ultimately be a double edged sword. There are only so many hours in a day you can view and comment on photos and get involved in group discussions. Unless you work in IT and are expected to sit at a screen all day everyday.
- Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit. People may or may not have thick skins. As with any text based online community subtle nuances of language are often lost, be prepared to put noses out of joint if sarcasm or irony are your main tools of choice in an online community. On the flip-side don't be afraid to jump in and get your feet wet, it's all just letters on a screen anyways.
- Never ever take yourself seriously. Bit like life really, and only help when you are asked for it, help that is.
- Play have Fun. These places are one big game, a game for adults, play have fun, maybe learn some stuff on the way, but don't expect to become rich or famous. Flickr particularly will never lead to much in the way of opportunities, getting published etc, other than the odd image here and there. The sheer volume of images makes it almost impossible to offer anything unique and universally appealing.
- Geeks first Photographers 2nd***. These kinds of places are invariably inhabited by Geeks. Said Geeks may or may not have an appreciation for the finer points of photography and it's nuances, of technique, history methodology or rules and rule breaking, don't expect any form of appreciation if your motivation for making images goes beyond the best lens and having the right amount of your image in focus
- Be open and receptive. You will make contact with fantastic people.
*Based on my limited experience with flickr.
**Of course Germany isn't the only place to impose this kind of censorship, but for some reason this time around the ripples ran a little deeper. There was a similar furore over the UAE's censorship of flickr back in around 2005, I think?
***I'm speaking here in broad generalisations.
Technorati Tags: flickr, photography, ipernity
Comments (9)
Am I alone in finding the kind of brand loyalty F can induce rather alarming?
Your own site is no further than one click away in a RSS reader or a bookmark, and yet people exhort you not to 'leave'?
Posted by brendadada | July 9, 2007 10:30 AM
Posted on July 9, 2007 10:30
thanks there Jane, looks like I need to write another article and perhaps give a more balanced view?
Posted by s2art | July 9, 2007 9:20 AM
Posted on July 9, 2007 09:20
As a TOTALLY amateur photographer and naively bright-eyed Flickr newbie with no knowledge of or experience with Flickr's "good old days", I somehow managed to make my way to your blog and, despite the somewhat discouraging slant of this post, found your list of tips to be helpful/interesting. I hope you don't remove yourself from Flickr. That would be a shame for those of us who have only recently arrived.
Posted by Jane | July 9, 2007 3:45 AM
Posted on July 9, 2007 03:45
Thanks, folks, woah, lot's a responses, might even get some more material for a future article thanks everyone.
Posted by s2art | July 5, 2007 7:59 AM
Posted on July 5, 2007 07:59
I went to ipernity just to keep in touch with my german friends, it's ok, can't say I'm overly impressed with it. uploading music files is fun, don't like the feature that tells people if I'm online and what places I've been to.
As for flickr, (or any similar site) my advice would be to look around lots and leave plenty of comments. After 2 years there I'm still amazed at the fantastic stuff I find there. Flickr is also a great place to make friends, both locally and all over the world. It's really what you want to make it.
Posted by barb | July 4, 2007 1:17 AM
Posted on July 4, 2007 01:17
hey s2.
agree with the quantity vs quality argument you posit, to a point. eg, i use flickr as a photo storage site first and foremost - if they go down, igby goes down ;(
but for the fame seekers, they can always make their 'snapshots' private and put the kittens/boobs with orton filter on public display i guess. it's all just too much hassle really fur mich.
and with the volume of junk and dickheads on flickr nowadays i rarely tool around checking out new groups / people. (is it harder to find the "right" people these days, or can i just not be bothered??)
finally, it might be worth adding something about cc licenses vs all rights reserved. like you said, there's little chance of getting more than one or two images bought or used (for money) by a company, but there's more than enough instances of companies ripping off pics willy nilly w/o informing the photogs, posting the license or following the correct terms. i used to use cc licenses, but now they scare me. why should a multibillion dollar company get free advertising material from me?
anyway, enjoy das licht!
Posted by tk | July 3, 2007 3:59 PM
Posted on July 3, 2007 15:59
It'll take a lot to get people to fully move off flickr (though Yahoo! seem to be doing a good job of showing us their particular vision for another grim meathook future), and I found Zooomr's shameless attempts at point-scoring to be a big turn off last year (I gather things haven't improved in that regard). I don't know if ipernity'll work out in the end either, but I guess we'll see.
I can't keep up with all the groups either, and I *am* an IT geek who has to stare at a screen all day...
Posted by cos | July 3, 2007 9:45 AM
Posted on July 3, 2007 09:45
Personally why i should care less that some Germans have to click a few more times to see some boobs on their computer isn't apparent.
Yeah, why should you care? Well for a start, that isn't true. I'd be annoyed if I couldn't see pictures I'd uploaded, on my own account. And then to see that I couldn't see them on friends' accounts too. No click-throughs, just no pictures, zilch, nada. And it's not just about boobs or willies.
S2, an excellent summary, I'm about to do the same kind of thing but with stuff about flagrant abuses of the TOU and so on, but you've saved me a lot of trouble, I can link to you here. :)
Posted by brendadada | July 2, 2007 8:39 PM
Posted on July 2, 2007 20:39
yeah i tried ipernity today, found it very slow and the site went down a number of times... but on the brighter side, although its an obvious flickr rip off, it's added some features which are really really lacking in flickr, flickr hasn't really changed much in the last year and a bit, even with the megabucks behind them. The reason that the censorship beatup annoyed me is that it was obvious that the development team at flickr/yahoo are able to make large changes on a tight schedule,.. all for the wrong reason.
Personally why i should care less that some Germans have to click a few more times to see some boobs on their computer isn't apparent.
So yeah a bit of controversy and a competitor or 20 will take advantage, and why not. Will keep an eye on ipernity, im sure they hadnt planned on a sudden boom in accounts which would explain the outages and performance.. but my flickr account is safe for now at least.
Posted by ziz | July 2, 2007 8:22 PM
Posted on July 2, 2007 20:22