My take on the big Flickr Change

Like many of you, the change at Flickr was pretty intense when I first saw it. Bang! Everything is new.  I actually noticed something was "wrong" the day before they went live with the new website. I was trying to upload some pics from Aperture when the upload failed and I had to re-authenticate Aperture with Flickr.  Maybe unrelated. Who knows.

Anyway, I have been a Pro subscriber for about 2 years now.  I use Flickr to store all of my edited images (good or bad) so that I have easy access to them when doing blog posts, tweets or any other time I need access to an image. Flickr has become part of my workflow.  Every day I check flickr for new activity and most importantly for the stats.

The Bad

Stats and Activity pages
What used to be as simple as visiting flickr.com now involves going to flickr.com and I then have go to a menu and select either "stats" or "recent activities".  The recent activity screen does not use the same layout of the old default activity summary.  I prefer the old summary.  I hear the free and "ad free" accounts have no stats. They should at least offer google analytics support.

Sets
I really do not like the new layout to view sets.  Before a visitor could see my most recent pictures and a list of the sets on the right side. Visitors would always see both.  Now sets are basically hidden and most people will never click on the Sets tab to see what sets I have created. Flickr went from offering us multiple layout choices to no choice at all.

"Edit Menu"
To view the "classic" Flickr screen with all of my photos, I have to click Edit. Silly. I don't want to edit anything. I want to view comments on my pictures and the total hits.

On my 13 inch Macbook, 1/3 of the screen is taken up by the cover photo in the edit screen. Once I start scrolling I can only see 2 rows of pictures. I can live with this, but still annoying.

I wish I could view this "classic" layout on everyone else's page, like we could before.

Once I click on a photo I get the new super ugly picture layout which forces me to scroll down to view comments from users.  I challenge you to figure out how to view different sizes of your own image.  No obvious menu exists for this. If I right click on my photo, I get an annoying window with size choices:

Cover Photo
Did you notice that the Cover Photo interface allows you to only select "recent" pictures or upload a picture. What are they thinking? The entire reason Flickr exists is to store my photos, yet I can't pick an old photo as my Cover image. I have to upload an old photo that I have already uploaded to Flickr six months ago. #fail. Pathetic design choice.  The list of these recent photos appears to also be at a low resolution, which is just ugly. I should have access to my entire photo collection.

Ads
I still have ads on my Groups list. I know I am just a "Pro" user and not "ad free", but that seems like a mistake.

Buttons
The new buttons within the interface do not have tool tips, so you don't know what they do until you click the button.

Contacts
The only thing I like about the new interface is that I can see big versions of my contacts pictures. I am clicking the star more often for my contacts.

Bottom line
I think Flickr screwed up with the new pricing model. They have increased the price for anyone who doesn't want to view ads and who isn't an old "pro" account holder. Not only do you pay twice the price of the old pro account, but you get less for the money.  You don't get "unlimited" storage and you don't get stats. 1TB of storage is just smoke and mirrors so that you drink the KoolAid. 1TB of storage is great buzz for the press, but what about the things you don't get?

I want a layout choice.  The best thing Flickr could do is to offer a "classic layout" choice.  When most websites roll out major changes, they give users a transition period at the least, which includes a button to switch between layouts. Flickr didn't consider this or just didn't care about the existing customer base.   Am I going to stop using the service?  No. It still serves my needs, I just have to click a lot more to get things done.

Why Flickr?

I have seen a few stories over the last few days about how the CEO of Yahoo is not really showing much interest in Flickr. It seems that even the Yahoo homepage redesign may be missing a Flickr button.

I keep using flickr mostly because of the existing community of not only photographers but local groups in my Area. As an example, the East Bay Regional Park District uses Flickr as a way for park visitors to share images. My local city has a flickr group as well.

I find it to be an easy place to share images with the non-photography world in a way that is recognized by many as a "safe" photo site. Name recognition goes a long way. Flickr really has helped me to get exposure as I build my photography portfolio. I also like the basic stats they provide to help me track views.

I have thought about opening an account at smugmug.com but I do not see a "community" the way I do on Flickr to help get exposure for my images.

Do I think Flickr is going to go away? No I don't, but I also don't see it changing any time soon.

For now I will keep using Flickr and 500px.

Not Good Enough for Stock Photography?

I submitted 10 sample images to a large stock photography website to see if I could "pass the test" and be accepted as a Stock photo contributor.

The good news is I had enough quality photos to "pass the test" and be accepted into the service as a contributor.  But the bad news is they rejected 3 photos that I happen to think are really good.

You can now be the judge. Do you agree with the assessment? I would love your feedback.

I can understand rejecting this photo as something that most "stock photo" customers would not really use.  The official reason was "Composition--Limited commercial value due to framing, cropping, and/or composition."

I happen to think this is a pretty good photo. Maybe you won't agree with me. Reason for rejection "Lighting Problems--Purple fringe, blown highlights or lenses flare."

This is one of my  most popular images on Flickr. In fact, an almost identical image from the same shoot, on the same day was published in a San Francisco Bay Area regional parks guidebook. Reason for rejection was "Lighting Problems--Purple fringe, blown highlights or lenses flare."

The stock photography site was Shutterstock.  My general feeling about the overall experience? I am not going to make contributions to the site.  I just don't have the time to submit 100's and 100's of images in hopes of making a few bucks on the side. Each photo you upload requires at least 7 tags, a clear name and then other category options selected. Then you have to wait for image approval.  This would turn into a full time job.

As a side note, today is a day for rejection. I tried to join the Flickr group "Flickr's Best Landscape Photographers". No luck. It is an exclusive group of about 300 people. Some of the images are pretty amazing. I will keep shooting until I can get my skills high enough to join. One of the contributors lives in my area and shoots in some of the same parks. His work is truly amazing.

Getting the most from Flickr

I am no expert on SEO or getting hits on my photos but after using Flickr for close to a year, I think the key is "groups".

If you join groups that match the topic of your images and submit your photos to the groups, you will get traffic.  It seems to be a great way to get exposure from people with common interests. In some cases you will submit your image to 3 or 4 groups (or more), but that will just increase the exposure. You will start getting feedback from other photographers.

1) Tag your photos. Make sure the tags really fit your image
2) Search for groups that match your photo. Example searches: Nighttime, B&W, HDR, Nikon
3) Join the groups that best match the photo and add them.

Las Trampas Park

I went for a hike in San Ramon to visit Las Trampas Park. My pictures are on flickr. The park was pretty huge and my 1.5 mile hike only scratched the surface of the park. The sky was really grey and I wasn't very happy with the photos overall.

When I hike, I try and track the path on EveryTrail which uses an iPhone app to follow my location over GPS and then overlay it on a map.  I know a lot of services exist to do this, but so far I really like this site.

While driving to Las Trampas, I passed 3 or 4 really amazing barns that screamed for photos, but once again, no safe place to stop and shoot a pic along the drive.