Flickr… Where have you been all my life?!

Part of the renovation of my website has been photo management. I quite liked the gallery I was using on my old site but it was outdated and a bit difficult to manage. It seemed like a lot of people I knew were using Flickr, but until I decided to revamp my website I never bothered to look into it. Now I’m completely addicted!

Not only is it a great place for storing and keeping track of your photos, but there are groups for everything you could imagine. Also, with the abilitiy to ‘tag’ photos you can add words that relate to each of your photos and then it groups them together with other photos that are tagged the same.

Here’s an example of how handy Flickr can be… A few years ago I was talking to someone about the Netherlands and some weird things about here. One of the things I was telling them about was the bicycles here, the bakfiets in particular.

The bakfiets is quite a common sight here in the Netherlands but of course every time I saw one I had no camera with me, until one day in Amsterdam. By that time it was long after the conversation I mentioned.

After joining Flickr I uploaded this photo and tagged it as ‘bakfiets’. Just for the hell of it I clicked the tag and went to see who else had photos tagged under the same name and there were 48 results!!

If only I’d joined Flickr earlier I would have had all the photos I needed for that conversation.

Another good thing about Flickr is the contact you have with other people through it. By joining groups with similar interests you can see photos from other people and they can see yours. Different groups have themes that they all take photos of and things they do, many even have gatherings in real life and go around taking photos together. I’ve not been using my camera much at all lately and this is really making me interested in getting into it again. Plus, I’m sure there is a lot I can learn about photography from the people on there.

Yeah, so what I’m trying to say is, I love Flickr!