Last month the buzz seemed to be about Facebook celebrating their first 10 years of existence so Flickr’s 10th birthday a few days later seem to pass by without too much of fuss. To celebrate, Flickr has put a little video together of different images (including twelve of my images). I watched it three times before I realised that the images were actually counting up to 10, it’s quite subtle, or maybe I was having a dumb moment!
I still really enjoy using Flickr and I have met a lot of people through the service, some of those early users are now not as active if at all. It’s a shame as Flickr along with maybe Friends Reunited and MySpace would of been a lot people’s first taste of social media. It’s seems funny to think but in Flickr’s early days Facebook was only open to people in Educational establishments, this meant that it was not just photography enthusiasts using Flickr. In the early days my non photo savvy friends were Flickr users too so sometimes the conversations below images could get quite lively. Now that sort of thing happens more on Facebook. In the early days getting your photos seen by lots of people was easy, just post to Flickr but now that’s changed as I find myself posting to my Flickr, Tumblr (I have 2 of those), Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Google+. This means that the conversation around photos can get a little fragmented and posting images online has become more of a chore.
Flickr enabled me to get my photography to a much wider audience than before. Before Flickr I was carrying a little 6″ x 4″ Muji photo album with my ‘best of’ in it. I also used another smaller photo sharing platform for a while (I’m not going to mention its name) but I found it a little pretentious and Flickr was far more accepting of my Lomo style. By the time Flickr came round I had been shooting for eight years and I had a back catalog of images to chose from which put me at an advantage over someone who had just bought their first digital camera. Because I was posting exclusively pictures shot on film my pictures stuck out on a mostly digital platform, this is not so much the case now as people have access to Lightroom and Photoshop and a wide range of image processing tutorials to jazz up thier digital images.
Very early on Flickr HQ asked if they could use one my images on their Login Page, from that moment on my popularity on the site skyrocketed. Lots of wonderful things came about because of being an active member of the Flickr community, for starters I made lots of friends in my local area through Flickr meets and from further afield. I even share an Office with Lissyloola who I met through Flickr and she’s married to Big Bambooly who she met on Flickr (I took one of my montage portraits of them on their wedding day). I got my first book published because the a Sub Editor at a publishing company was keeping a close eye on my Flickr account. For a long while I was getting photography work exclusively through Flickr.
Some people say Flickr lost its way a bit, it certainly lost ground to Instagram in the mobile space but I still think it’s the best platform for showing off and organising photos. I look forward to using Flickr for the next 10 years and see how it will change and develop.
Below are the images that Flickr used in the 10 years of Flickr video, click on the images to be taken to their Flickr page.
Great post Kev. Flickr is still my first choice and I have made
A ton of friends through it
Good to hear. At least there is a few of keeping the dream alive.
Love you Kev!
I love you and your vibrating pillow.
It’s been a wild ride, Kev…
I can’t view the Flickr video 🙁
It works for me but I admit the Yahoo video player is a little temperamental compared to the YouTube to Vimeo player. Try looking at it on the Flickr blog: http://blog.flickr.net/en/2014/02/10/happy-10th-birthday-flickr/