Tips for sharing pictures with Flickr

If you want to just search for some tips – this search will look up the Flickr.com support pages.


Otherwise here are some of the most common questions you might come across when trying Flickr for the first time.

What is Flickr?
How do I get started?
How do I organise my pictures?
How does tagging work?
Using Flickr for more
Commenting and favourites
Groups
Things you can do with Flickr
More info

Extra background here

What is Flickr?

Flickr is a photo-sharing website. You can upload photos (and short videos up to 90 seconds long), organise and share them with other people. When you upload a photo, it has it’s own unique website address so you can link to individual photos or group them together in sets. You can also embed them in other other websites (like a blog).

How do I get started?

  1. Create a free Flickr account (Yahoo own Flickr, so you can use an existing Yahoo account or create a new one)
  2. Click on ‘Upload photos & videos’ and then ‘Choose photos and videos’. You can pick more than one. Once the list opf pictures you want to upload appears in the box then click the Upload button
  3. Click ‘add a description’ you will see a list of all the photos you have just uploaded
  4. You can tag all your photos at once by typing in tags (eg animal, building) and clicking add
  5. You can also add them to a set – which helps group them together and means you can give a single link out to a set of photos
  6. You can give a title and descprition to all your photos. This gives the photos more information and helps to describe what is going on, making them more findable
  7. Scroll down and click save – you’ll now be on your photostream page. You can copy and paste this link to anyone and they will always see your latest photos. If you made a set, click on the thumbnail on the right hand side. You can give this link out to anyone that wants to see all the pictures in that set, even if you add some more later. If you click on the slideshow icon Flickr has automatically created a slideshow of that set, so you can sent that link out too.
  8. Click on any of your pictures and then click ‘All sizes’ you’ll see a huge version of the picture. Click on ‘Small’ and there is some code that you can paste into another website to display your photo
  9. When you embed a picture on Flickr (whether it is yours or someone elses under a Creative Commons licence) you should link to the picture on Flickr to encourage blog readers to explore your photos and perhaps leave a comment there

How do I organise my pictures?

Your Photostream always shows a list of your photos with the most recent ones at the top but you can also organise your photos by putting them into sets (like albums, eg. Launch Event or Holiday 2009) or you can give photos tags (or keywords eg. sport, architecture, birmingham).

How does tagging work?

Tags are really useful because they help you and anyone else searching for photos find out more about the photo. Really good tagging makes your photos more findable which can lead to new contacts on Flickr, perhaps people working in your area or other people interested in your work.

You can also use tags to gather together lots of people’s pictures from an event for example by creating a unique tag (eg communityspacesfund) and link to it http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/communityspacesfund/

or even embed it as a slideshow

Using Flickr for more

At it simplest, Flickr can be used as an online photo library for individual or group but it is much more powerful as a way of making new connections with people on and offline.

Commenting and favourites

By default all pictures that you post on Flickr can be commented on. This might just be a ‘nice photo’ or a request to find out more about the picture or use it in a publication. A photo can be the start of a conversation and if you have used the photo in a blog post make sure that you include a link back to that post, because people may come across your photo on Flickr if it is tagged and captioned well.

This picture is in 5 different sets of the photographer’s own photos, is captioned, and has dozens of commetns and requests to be included in other group pools, linking him and his photos to many more people.

Groups

Find other Flickr users who share photos on a similar theme or place to your interests by searching groups.

Once you have joined the group, when you upload photos you can choose to submit them to the group and they will then appear in the group pool. This effectively promotes your photos to a group of people already interested in the type of photos you are taking, making it much more likely for you to get feedback and comments, than just publishing ‘blindly’
Eg. http://www.flickr.com/groups/birmingham/
There are also discussions (in a forum) where members of the group can take the conversation beyond the comments associated with individual photos and arrange meetings, set challenges etc
http://www.flickr.com/groups/birmingham/discuss/

Things you can do with Flickr

  • Create a press release and link to 3 or 4 pictures which you can caption and will be available in the all the right sizes for newspapers and wesites
  • At an event, tell people to tag any pictures they take and upload to Flickr with something unique (eg. barfordfete09) then you will be able to link to everyone’s photos without someone having to gather them by email and send out again.
  • Find creative commons licensed pictures (go to advanced search to find ‘creative commons’ photos) to help illustrate a presentation – search Flickr for photos about your area. don’t forget to credit the photographer by including a link back to their Flickr page

One Page Guide to Flickr

More info

Next>> Beginner’s guide to Flickr

Back<< Where to blog: WordPress vs Typepad vs Blogger?