Flickr the Photographer’s best friend
In this age of the Internet, there are many apps and media sites out there, Facebook Instagram, Snapchat, Tiktok but not many people know about Flickr. What is Flickr?
Flickr is a free online platform created by Yahoo! where one can post photos. It allows up to 1000 photos to be uploaded and automatically shows all the settings in which the photos were taken such as shutter speed and ISO, encouraging other budding enthusiasts to take similar photos themselves.
Let’s dive deeper into what Flickr has to offer and how it can help you.
Camera and Lens Groups
One thing that really makes Flickr stand out is its community and its unique groupings. Flickr allows you to join different groups specific to cameras or lens types. Seeing what kind of photos the camera or lens can take is really beneficial in making a purchase decision or a creative choice for a shoot.
There are tons of camera and lens model groups available, allowing you to explore and see which equipment fits your needs. Details such as the number of members, photos, and date of group created are also available for your consideration before your own voluntary request to join them.
Well, if professional cameras are beyond your budget or preference, there are even groups for photos taken with smartphone cameras.
Photograph Settings
Flickr caters to aspiring photographers who want to better their craft. Other than displaying basic camera settings such as shutter speed, aperture, and ISO, other information such as focal range and the lens model are also included.
As a photographer who just started out, it would be really useful to know what kind of settings experts are using, learn from them, and try to recreate the same shot yourself.
Not to mention, you are able to find location tags to know where the photographer has taken the photo. Basically, all the ingredients to make a great photo are made conveniently available at your fingertips.
Compression
In terms of photo quality, Flickr outshines other social media sites out there, they often compress uploaded photos a lot. Once you upload a photo on other sites, you can see that the photo becomes very pixelated when viewing it on a larger screen. Of course, the main purpose of this compression is to shorten loading times so that you are able to view your photos much faster.
On Flickr, 70–90% of the original image quality is preserved, ensuring that your photographs look sharp and clear keeping the beautiful details. It might even be an ideal place to store your photos in the form of a portfolio or just for plain safe-keeping.
A Positive Community
In addition, compared to other social media sites, Flickr has a higher concentration of professional photographers. Besides learning through observing the photos that other photographers post, you are also able to get encouraging comments as well as likes in the form of ‘’favorites’’.
The Flickr community is truly a welcoming space for amateur photographers, you will hardly see any hate or spam comments on this platform as most users join to either learn or share their digital snaps.
A Safe Photo Vault
Flickr can also act as your portfolio. If you don’t have the funds to start up your own website, you can post your photos on Flickr and refer other people to that link. Using this free online platform is a good way to showcase all the works which you have done so far.
With a dedicated Photostream, Flickr provides a very organised outlook to photos that you have uploaded. Be it portrait, landscape, or even photo of odd resolutions, the Photostream neatly makes it nice and easy to browse.
If keeping things categorically grouped is your thing, you are able to further group the photographs into different albums which is helpful if you have a lot of photos.
Conclusion
Flickr is really beneficial for all photographers, no matter whether you have just picked up your first camera, or a professional with years of experience, you ought to give it a try. With all the free tools available and a concentrated photography community, you have nothing to lose but everything to gain from it.
For a more detailed walkthrough and tutorials on how to use Flickr, check out the YouTube video below!
