The West Ring

I was recently surfing the blogosphere looking for photography related ones and found this post by Brian Auer over at Epic Edits, and thought “Why not?” He’s hosting a writing project on “Social Photography”, and it’s part of a bigger project called “The Social Media Mega Project” hosted by InspirationBit. The idea is to write something about one of the photography based social media sites.

Flickr - it has caused me angst and confusion! I guess that’s not quite the opening you were expecting? Let me explain.

When I first set up my own website it was mainly because I wanted to have my own photo gallery. I had used Fotopic (is that still going?) but was never really keen on the interface. So, I set my own up using Gallery v1 and was very happy with it.

So, to Flickr. I created an account as it was the best way I could find of moblogging to my Blogger blog. (You couldn’t do so directly here in the UK.) Though I didn’t upload many pictures, I was quite happy with the user interface. I especially liked the ability to geotag my photos - it appealed to my (not so) inner geek.

When the time came to change my web hosting provider and rebuild, I agonised over what I wanted to do, and what I wanted out of it. At the time I said that I wasn’t after, or expecting, much traffic. It was only really for my amusement, and something for my immediate family to look at. The main dilemma was whether I built my own gallery when I liked Flickr’s user interface and its functionality. And if I had my own gallery, why would I want to upload my pictures to multiple places? There was also the cost factor - with my own gallery I could have as many albums as I wanted. In the end I decided to stick with Gallery but upgrade to v2, and not bother with Flickr.

The thing is, I didn’t “get” what Flickr was about. Being kinda new to the social web I’m not really “into” it, and nor it seems, are many of my friends and colleagues. My philosophy has tended to be that if I’ve got something that’s worth saying then I will, but otherwise I tend to look, not touch. Even on forums I tend to lurk. But that’s not what Flickr (and blogs) are all about.

Now I’m getting a “feel” for the web 2.0, I find I do want to be included, and I do want other people to look at, and comment on, my work. (This still feels slightly wrong as I’m not the attention seeking type!) Hence deciding to participate in this project and also making more use of Flickr. Since that decision I have had a proper look around it. One of the things I like is seeing pictures taken by specific camera models and being able to see the exif data (if allowed). I also searched on the name of our next holiday destination and it’s confirmed there’s some great coastal scenery. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll end up vetoing a proposed holiday destination because of the poor photographic prospects! I found a couple of good photos during that search so began looking at that user’s other pictures and even ended up posting a comment! I suppose the next step is to join a group but I’ve not been that brave yet…

I opened by saying Flickr gives me angst, but I think what it really gives me is an opportunity, and maybe in time, inspiration.

For the record, my Flickr photostream is here, though currently low on content!