Over exposed?

By Jon Bounds on Mar 13, 08 11:17 AM in Culture

It's one of the dread phrases in human conversation. No, not "please welcome our special guest Robbie Williams", but "why don't you come and see our holiday snaps?". The crushing boredom of other people's pictures was a sitcom staple for many a year, so why is one of the biggest activities on the internet photo sharing?

The boom in digital cameras, and the increasing quality of mobile phone cameras, has created a glut of photos that sit on hard drives across the world. It's now easy to take 20 photos where years ago you'd have taken one carefully-posed snap, counting down from 24 and wishing you'd have paid the extra for the 36 exposure film for your holiday. All these photos have got to go somewhere, but online sharing is so much more that the digital equivalent of a battered shoebox in the loft.

Flickr, the most famous photo-sharing website, is four years old this week and hosts over two billion photos. Facebook holds even more, over four billion they say, but most are visible only to friends. So, given that they're mostly the kinds of photos that we'd have faked a prior engagement to avoid, is the whole thing so popular?

It's all about being able to find what you're interested in, Flickr has a wonderful search facility based mostly on tags. Tags are labels that you (and others if you allow) add to your photos, often the simpler the better "tree", "cat", "beard", "bullring", and this opens all sorts of possibilities that just giving the title "Me at the seaside" couldn't. Flickr also opened its database (through a thing called an API) to anyone, meaning that they could build websites that used and showed the photos or even photo-frames that gave you an automated and fresh slideshow.

You can watch photos added in realtime around the globe (there's that geotagging again), you can get photos to spell out words, you can compare the popularity of two different cites (one of mine) or you can just bask in the nearly two million photos tagged "cat".

You might not think that your photos are interesting to others, but the internet is a large place and there are always other people with similar passions. Groups are not only to show off your photos, but people do meet and form real communities (including in Brum). Flickr has developed its own algorithm to decide which photos are interesting (as closely guarded a secret as the recipe for Dr Pepper), you can see wonderful, inspiring, photography from around the world every day.

It's the sense of community, as well as the easy co-existence between the snappers and the artists, that has made Flickr such a success - and keeping it focussed on one thing has prevented the annoyance that people eventually feel with most social web sites. Most commenters are also photo-sharers, which seems to go a good way to prevent the puerile gubbins posted below YouTube videos.

There are other sites that do similar jobs now, and most camera manufacturers or retailers have had a go at a bespoke model. Whichever site you choose, you'll find that your enjoyment and interest in photography is only increased by letting them out there.

Someone out there is desperate to see that photo of your dog in a wig.

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5 Comments

Julia Gilbert said:

Flickr has changed the way I look at the world. Before Flickr my photos were confined to snaps of holidays, friends and family. I still take those photos now, of course, but having been inspired by some of the wonderful photos on Flickr, I now see beauty where I previously hadn't, such as abandoned buildings or other signs of urban decay. Pretty soon after discovering Flickr I bought a digital camera that was small enough to carry around with me all the time.

There are so many great photos on there, the Interesting pages are a good place to find inspiration, especially for new users. My newfound appreciation has simply come from looking at lots of other Flickr users' photos, not from any formal advice, although there are groups on there that will give you that if that's what you want. I agree that one of the best things about flickr is that there are people of all abilities using it, I have been inspired by some of the more experienced photographers rather than intimidated and I hope that's the common experience.

One of the fun Birmingham Flickr groups I discovered is Guess where Birmingham, where users put photos of the not so well known locations in the city and other users have to guess where they are.

March 13, 2008 1:19 PM

t'Internet said:

Isn't flickr just another huge pile of... UGC? More depressing evidence of Andrew Keen's Cult of the Amateur?

Just because you now can publish your entire life in a Tourette-like stream of consciousness for the whole world to see, doesn't mean you should.

Every week we're assaulted by another barrage of UGC apps that enable the infinite army of monkeys to spew out more inane garbage. (Someone, please, blow up QIK's servers, now! Let's nip this one in the bud)

Free up some bandwidth and leave your photos on your hard drive. We don't want to see them and we certainly don't need any more dross clogging up the interweb.

Web 2.0 social media saddos of the world, please, STOP! The rest of us are choking on your BS. Tweet tweet.

March 13, 2008 3:49 PM

Derek Belm said:

I am attempting to come to terms with such technology and can see the benefits to both my personal and professional life of something like Flickr.
But the "tagging" issue does have particular drawbacks for myself.
As a professional model-maker interested in modelling, I have found that simple, basic terms used everyday in my chosen industry - such as "models" or "modelling" and even "larger models" - can throw up all sorts of things one isn't really expecting or wanting to see.
So I've taken to using terms like "scale models" and so far so good.

March 13, 2008 9:03 PM

Eric said:

Jon,

You make an excellent case for getting our photos out in the world. I wholeheartedly agree that the community aspect is what makes Flickr so compelling. Frankly, I prefer Smugmug for hosting my overall collection of photos; however, I remain an active pro member in Flickr because of the community.

Cheers,

Eric
PhotographyBay.com

March 14, 2008 11:47 AM

Jon Bounds said:

Eric, thanks. I've never tried Smugmug, I must have a go.

Derek, that's it - since people make up their own tags it can take a while to find what you're after but, once you've found it, you can start using the same terms. Eventually it will become part of the "language".

March 14, 2008 4:07 PM