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The Flickr user thread

Funny how impressions vary.

Flickr is very much on the mend IME. The film photography groups are bursting with interesting content. More and people my age (20-40) are dumping instagram and getting back on Flickr. I moderate 5 or 6 film photography groups and I'm now almost struggling with the amount of content to moderate. Consistently interesting photography, and way, way better content than what you see on, say, facebook groups or instagram, 500px.

I'm enjoying so much having a tidy, curated, searchable historical record of my photography on flickr that I myself have just paid in advance for a 2 year pro account.

The people who have left, or are leaving are - based on what I can see - mostly the middle aged types who used to dump hundreds of samey HDR photos on unrelated groups. Think dreamy waterfall picture captured on tripod with slow shutter speed, or the 10 millionth photo of a kingfisher or Jaguar s-type with a D850. Most of these types got very salty when flickr limited non-pro accounts to 1000 photos. Such a breath of fresh air since then in the groups!

I have not noticed any pornography in my feed.

So yes, Flickr is undergoing a change, and as far as I can see is very much a positive one.

That is encouraging although there is an equivalent to middle age types dumping hundreds of HDR images on multiple groups and it's millenial types thinking that shooting film makes their images cool. You know the type I mean - shots of garages either in a desert or illuminated in mist at night, derrelict buildings, B&W 'street' shots made with a Contax T2 or Leica M6 and shot on Lomography film stock. :) And that's before we get into the utterly formulaic YouTube vlog with obligatory lowfi hip hop beats, half mast trousered woke presenters with bowl cut mullets and amiguous gender identity.

Please don't take that as anything other than a bit of fun - If I were twenty years younger I'd be exactly like that! Stereotypes exist up and down the age range.

I'd much prefer Flickr to be revived so if that's happening that's a big plus. You won't of course see any pornography that you haven't subscribed to but it's there in abundance and it's one reason not to let your kids access Flickr without some serious oversight. The problem for at least is not so much that it's there; as I said I have no problem with pornography. Rather that it's very common for your images to get appropriated in to collections of material clearly being curated for titilation rather than high art and that's before we have to deal with some very questionable curations, all of which seem to involve children. Seriously, I've taken down every single photo of my kids recently because so many users were adding them to their favourite collections that were full of kids.
 
That is encouraging although there is an equivalent to middle age types dumping hundreds of HDR images on multiple groups and it's millenial types thinking that shooting film makes their images cool. You know the type I mean - shots of garages either in a desert or illuminated in mist at night, derrelict buildings, B&W 'street' shots made with a Contax T2 or Leica M6 and shot on Lomography film stock.

I know exactly what you mean and I absolutely agree - loads of those types. However, I have stopped hating on them when I realised that those are true 'film photography' customers (unlike, say, vintage camera collectors). They buy cameras, film, scanners and processing equipment, which means they keep at least a few industries alive and thriving: film companies (Ilford, Foma, Kodak Alaris), chemical companies, scanner companies, not to mention the technicians who'll perform CLA repairs on their cameras. Therefore in short, I personally think that the fact that this particular demographic is embracing film photography and using flickr can only be welcome news!
 
I know exactly what you mean and I absolutely agree - loads of those types. However, I have stopped hating on them when I realised that those are true 'film photography' customers (unlike, say, vintage camera collectors). They buy cameras, film, scanners and processing equipment, which means they keep at least a few industries alive and thriving: film companies (Ilford, Foma, Kodak Alaris), chemical companies, scanner companies, not to mention the technicians who'll perform CLA repairs on their cameras. Therefore in short, I personally think that the fact that this particular demographic is embracing film photography and using flickr can only be welcome news!

Well I agree with that 100%! There are some great little businesses that have sprung up lately. Speed Graphic is the obvious retailer that is a 'go to' source of anything analogue related but I really like the little cottage businesses like 'Analogue Wonderland' who may only sell film, but they do it with such flair and passion. I love the 'film club' boxes where you get a selection of film each month as a subscriber and then the (informal) group shares images from those films and discusses the merits and virtues etc.

I was in touch with the chap who set up 'Silverpan' last year and suggested he could start a subscription service for customers who pay a fixed monthly fee and get a fixed monthly priority service in return. He was already thinking about it and subseuqently did just that. I now give him £100 a month on Direct Debit and get six rolls of either 135 or 120 processed and scanned (huge scans as well!). It's a great service especially when most of the big labs are closed due to the virus.

Have you also seen PPP Camera Repairs? Young guy subsidising his study income by fixing cameras but crucially he also aims to fix electrical faults that were previously not fixable. He's doing a brilliant line of business:https://www.instagram.com/pppcameras/

And of course there's JCH himself.

I'm old enough to say I never stopped shooting film even if I did spend a few years in the wilderness, shooting mostly digital, so this 'pre-cambian explosion' in all things film is indeed exceptionally welcome.
 
Sometimes I think Flickr selects this kind of garbage deliberately just to wind people up. It works.


Bit harsh methinks ...

I found them not that bad at all actually - even the 'street photography' (and I loathe the genre ...) A few I was quite impressed by, considering that Flickr is pretty much dominated by hobbyist snappers.

Either way - they were all much better than the dross that used to populate the 'Explore' pages during the Yahoo ownership.

I have been quite impressed with the new management - they sorted out some problems with my account sign-in after they took over.
Had pretty much given up after countless unsuccessful attempts with the deadnecks from Yahoo and the new mob sorted it within a couple of days of my first email.
 
I just got a reminder about their further restrictions on how you can use a free flickr account, so that's me out, i've just deleted my account (only 50 private photos allowed). They seem to spend lots of time saying how they haven't deleted any photos or other such rubbish, but frankly it's time to look for a different hosting solution for me.
 
I ended up using piwigo, simple hosting, multiple themes about half the cost of a paid Flickr account, obviously none of the "social media" side of things that Flickr has but that seems dead anyway.
 
How many photos have you got on flickr?
there is a maximum number for non pro accounts.

Pete
 
How many photos have you got on flickr?
there is a maximum number for non pro accounts.

Pete

I don't post many online so a free account is fine for me ... plus you can have more than one.

I have two, one is solely to put up pics for posting elsewhere, PFM mainly; after a while I just delete old ones so the number is low (77 at the moment)

The other is for pics I particularly like (even if others find them mediocre ;) ) - I have about 400 on that one.

I did have a third one that I used for archive scans but lost that back in the Yahoo days (I deleted the email account it was linked to) and can't been bothered to repost it.
 
You need to click on the bb code word thar will bring up the link, then set the size.

Pete
 


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