Ok I get it now. You upload your photos then share them around with people with similar interests to you. It’s not just a portfolio site, it’s all about connecting and exchanging.
Why isn’t Flickr used by more people? It’s fantastic!
Here are my reasons why:
- Very easy to find images you were looking for
- A good group function that gives creators a high level of control
- Open-to-all ‘pools’ of images to bundle related photos together
- A great search tool that sorts results by ‘interestingness’
- Well-adopted API which links and syncs with other sites
(not Facebook of course) - A large community of helpful and insightful photographers/commenters
- Uploading is a dream and meta-data from photos are autoprocessed
(ie. it knows images were shot with an N95) - Digital rights management to give users true ownership
- Geotagging support linked with Yahoo! Maps
- Highly secure login through Yahoo! authorisation
(ok – tenuous but important) - A great visual identity, history and brand currency etc etc…
The point is, I’m sold. Gush over.
One other thing though is that once photos are up there, you can share them in all sorts of ways. My favourite is through the slideshow, which lets you grab an embed code to place elsewhere – how cool is that?
Here’s an example, taken from the lifesforsharing group pool being used by photographers who were in Trafalgar Square last night, best watched fullscreen:
Cool right? I’m going to be taking my camera out more often, so expect a spot of photo-blogging very soon. Now then, where’s my memory stick…