You know, I had actually forgotten that Thing #36 was Flickr Revisited. It's just a coincidence that I happened to choose today to upload my first batch of photos.
So, after all this time, why did I decide to come back to Flickr? Today, I went to the zoo and took so many pictures that I filled the memory card. After deleting the blurry or otherwise low quality images, I still had 162 good pictures. Normally, I pick a couple of my favorites to share on Facebook or my blog, but this time I had so many good ones I wanted to share a larger batch. So naturally I thought of Flickr.
Of course, I realized that few people would care to take the time to view all 162, so I winnowed it down to 50 really good pictures. But when I tried to upload them, Flickr told me that they would put me WAY over my monthly limit. So I canceled out and did two things. First, I weeded even more aggressively, getting it down to the 35 best photos. Then I shrank every one of those 35 images down to 1024 x 768 pixels. When I uploaded the smaller images, the total consumed only about a quarter of my monthly limit.
So the key to managing Flickr seems to be twofold: be choosy about which photos you share (only the cream of the crop), and be attentive to file size.
How could the library use Flickr? The most obvious way is to post photos of the library building and library events. A public library might host a photo contest for their patrons, centralizing the submitted images to one gallery. The Criss Library, where I work, is posting digitized images from the University Archives on Flickr. It's an easy-to-use service with an enormous user base (which hopefully means it's unlikely to disappear), so it could be useful for any person or organization that wishes to make a photo album available to the public.
About Me
- Anj
- I'm a cataloger in an academic library. In my spare time, I write novels. Someday I may even attempt to get them published.
3 comments:
One thing you said made me thing about how I use flickr:
"Of course, I realized that few people would care to take the time to view all 162, so I winnowed it down to 50 really good pictures."
AS of this morning I have 27,593 photos in my account and I still have about 2000 photos to upload from my honeymoon last September. Can you guess that I disagree with your statement a bit?
Do I upload everything, no. I do delete the photos I think are total crap. (Mostly the blurry ones.) However, I don't limit my uploads to just the excellent photos. (Keep in mind that I pay for my account @ $25/year so I don't have an upload limit.)
However, what I mostly disagree with is your "few people would care to take the time" comment. Sure, not everyone will want to look at all of my photos but I don't let that limit my uploads.
Part of the reason I upload so many photos is to contribute to the larger commons that flickr is. Even though someone might not be specifically looking at my photos, they might do a search and find one of my photos that perfectly fits their needs.
In other words, don't assume as to what others are interested in. Contribute as much as you can and you'll be surprised as how others might use it.
Hi Anj, your photos are great! They make me want to go to the zoo. Have seen the Henry Doorly Zoo and Wildlife Safari Group? For obvious reasons it would be a great Group for you to join and contribute photos.
Michael, thank you for the contrasting opinion. Your point about how people use the "larger commons" is well taken, and I can definitely see the value in your approach as well. I'll probably continue to be somewhat selective about the photos I share, because I plan to stick with the free version and will have to be mindful of the upload limit.
Allana, thanks for telling me about that group. I joined and added all of my zoo photos to their pool. I'm enjoying looking through other people's images, too.
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