How To Use Flickr

If you haven’t ever heard of Flickr…here is the site.  www.flickr.com.  It is a photo sharing community.  There are a lot of people over there and a lot of different uses for Flickr.  Some people just use it to store photos they want to share online.  Others use it just for friends and family.  Some professional photographers use it to show their work.  So why do I use it?  I use it to share my work & meet other photographers.

So basically, this is what I do.  This afternoon I uploaded this photo…

Now I need to fill in information about it.  I added the title, “Little Einstein in Egypt.”  Then I added some tags.  I just put in words that I thought had to do with the picture.   Little Einstein, Egypt, bokeh, depth of field, canon50d, canon, Africa, Pyramids, giza, pyramids of giza,

After that I usually put something in the description.  I try to include the location in either the tags and/or description so people know where it is.  It is frustrating to view a photo of a lake and not even know what country it was taken in.  You can also Geo-tag your photos in Flickr too.

Next, I pick some groups I want to send the photo too.  They have groups on so many different topics.  They probably have a group on any photo you could imagine you wanted to upload.  I sent this picture to 3 groups… Egypt, Bokeh Wednesday & Visit the World- The Travel Guide.  Sometimes I send it to more and sometimes just 1 group.  I also tweet it to my Twitter.

I try to get to some of my contacts photos and maybe a few from my groups every day.  I use Darckr to help me with that.  When you view someone’s photo you can mark it as a favorite, comment and even leave a note on the photo.  It is an easy way to interact with others, make new friends and get some photography inspiration.

On the Flickr home page you will also see a link that says Explore.  This is where you can see the most “Interesting” photos for each day.  It is a fun goal to try to get one of your photos in Explore.  It is based on different things.  How many comments you get, how many favorites you get and how quickly you get them.  I have also heard it depends on who is leaving you the comments, how many groups you send it to and the types of groups you send it too.

In almost 2 years I have had 43 photos make it to Explore.  I don’t really try to have them get there but I do get excited when they make it.  I check if any of my pictures made it by going to http://bighugelabs.com/ and using Scout to see if any photos are in Explore.  Photos go in and out of Explore all the time.  Right now I have 7 that are currently there.

So I think I am going to wrap this up.  Flickr can be a lot of fun!  It is a great way to get your photos out there and let others see and comment on them.  If you have any more questions about Flickr, I would be happy to answer them 🙂  Julie’s Flickr Photostream