I just read a blog entry where someone was criticised for uploading “holiday snaps” to their Flickr account. When did Flickr morph from being a photo sharing service and community into being a photography competition?
While I am a lot more selective about what I upload now, since being criticised myself for “uploading everything I take a picture of” and also since I became more conscious about not cluttering my stream with near-duplicates and really bad shots, I still upload everything I like. Why? Because my Flickr account is my photo archive, it is where I send friends and family to see via my photos what my family and I have been up to. It is not a “portfolio”, it is not for me a place to show off and I have no delusions any of it will sell.
There are some brilliant photographers on Flickr, looking through the explorer could lead you into thinking only the best is allowed but that is clearly not the case. It is a Photo Sharing site, not a showcase!
I guess this has wound me up for the usual reason of people imposing
their opinions on others. They use the service one way and feel
everyone should agree with them. Until Flickr announce a rule that there will be some sort of quality control police, people should be allowed to post whatever they like, whether that is what they consider their best work or if it is large portions of happy gurgling baby, sand castles or cute cat shots.
Perhaps people who feel only the best should show up on Flickr need to remember for most of us photography is a fun hobby, not life or death.
Technorati Tags: flickr, photography
10 Comments
I think its just the snobs, why should somebody else be bothered what i have in my stream. Does it detract form them?
well i guess if the world sees flickr as a place to seem personal photos rather than a gallery form art them it might detract from it.
But wait that’s not what flickr was founded for and if the snobs want a gallery of there own stuffy artwork they can £$%^ off and setup a site the way they want it.
btw i don’t post everything since i take around 10gigs per week
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but i post what i like not what i think is going to get the mass audience.
Interesting to hear this. Photography should be fun!
Exactly, how does it hurt anyone else? If you don’t like my pics remove me as a contact!
If I want feedback I simply post them into forums, otherwise I am not bothered. It has to be said though that I have a large archive of personal photos that I have kept private.
I think its that these people want flickr be seen as a high browe place, so when you say “i’m on flickr” people will be impressed. I reckon there are places like that out there but these people probably can’t get in
.
I think of flickr as a mediocrity factory. I tend to get addicted to comments and I soon need more and more but to get a lot positive comments on flickr you have to put up rather low quality accessable work. I used to curatore the photography collection of a well respected art gallery and we wouldn’t show any of the popular images on flickr.
That shows how little taste I have, I tend to like the popular images on flickr!
That said I was reading a portrait photographer say to produce commercially viable work you need to put your artistic eye to one side and just give them what they want. Forget any personal sense of style or art and just bang out frame-filling closeup smiling faces. Just shows there is a divide between “popular” and “art”.
Personally I would much prefer my work to NOT be elitist (if ever that was likely to be a danger) so perhaps Flickr and I are well suited, heh.
There’s only so many sunsets I can stomach.
There are some really good photographers out there, I’m more interested in finding people with great ideas.
I’m watching wiseacre at the moment, his stuff is just fantastic.
Wiseacres Photo Stream
I agree that his pics have that creative spark often missing but I will never get tired of sunsets, or beaches, or mountains or any of the other types that I favourite every day. You can’t beat nature!