Flickr… more than just a photoblog.
Flickr came on the scene a few years ago and steadily built a huge fan base. And while there are many thousands of amateurs and maybe millions of poorly lit cat pictures, sunsets and flowers, there are hundreds of amazing professionals, and amateurs, in all disciplines showing images there.
Flickr uses tags to help describe the images and the user can use the tags like search engine keywords. The tagging of images makes it more intuitive than keywords and finding images that you want to see can be fun to search for.
Create a Flickr account and start adding images to it. (DAP 3)
The real fun happens when you start to join ‘groups’ on Flickr. The groups are collectives of photographers who shoot the same subjects, or camera, or with a certain technique. There are groups based on concepts, trends, learning and more. Groups are interesting collections of images and a good way to have your images be seen by people searching for images for fun, inspiration and possible assignments. Whether or not you would get a plum assignment from your Flickr is open for debate, but I can attest to at least to projects that I have worked on that started with my Flickr images.
Flickr is a current favorite for lots of art directors, designers, media types and editors. Be there and be seen. Make sure your profile is as complete as you can make sure it links to your website and your photoblog. Flickr offers free accounts and Pro accounts for $25 per year (updated by Adam... thanks Adam). The pro account offers more features of course, but a free one can work for you as well,
Flickr also offers cool little RSS feeds called the ‘Flickr Badge’ and the Daily ZeitGeist tool. My Flickr badge is over on the right side of this page. When you add new images to your Flickr pages, they are fed to your Flickr badge which is viewed on your site. That’s cool. And immediate… and viral. And there are lots of third party support for Flickr including printing your images, making stamps, transferring to DVD and backing up images and slideshows. These tools make your Flickr account a very powerful marketing tool. And if that isn't enough, you can hook right up to Target to print your images and pick them up at a local store, or have them mailed to you.
Flickr also lets you set permissions for specific images and sets of images. You can make them private so only people you have given permission to can see them, and you can create multiple levels of viewers for security or promotion of images to specific clients. You can also upload very large images and make them downloadable if you wish. Flickr has various copyright protections from full protection to Creative Commons licensing.
QOOP has created an alliance with Flickr that allows you to print stunning books, calendars and posters from your Flickr images, or sets. Inexpensive and fun, they make great gifts and promotional tools. The Flickr community is wide and deep and getting more users daily. That is the way viral communities make more value for everyone involved.
Here are a few of my Flickr friends:
Catherine Jamieson
Mindfulness
Adam Nollmeyer
Deymus
Southwest Styles (My Code Warrior Partner)
Yuri Dojc
Tomorrow: Web Design Options
Previous:
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1)
No comments:
Post a Comment