Flickr

Hi, I also found all the old groups were full of tumbleweed, also some of my photos looked like crap when uploaded to Flickr wheras the same pics looked great on RFF, I really don't have the motivation to work out why, so I'm going to close my account in the next few days.
Also several photos got downloaded and used elsewhere which I figure probably won't happen from this site if only because of how niche it is.
Anyway basically I'm over Flickr and for me RFF is the only forum I involve myself in, partly because of how pleasant people seem to be on here.
 
The problem with flickr groups is a lot of people started groups which became popular years ago, and have left the site without ever choosing any backup mods. So a lot of groups go completely unmaintained, and overrun with off-topic content, or if they're moderated groups, they haven't had anything approved in years. Unfortunately there is no way to transfer ownership of an abandoned group. If my understanding is correct, if the founding member's account is deleted, the group gets transferred to the oldest account which exists with the group, but obviously this usually just means it ends up in the hands of another dormant user.

When Yahoo sold the site, a lot of the user base in Asia stopped using it, as well when the new owners ended the 1 terabyte of free uploads and threatened accounts with deletion, a good chunk of people just stopped using the site. I go through my faves and check the accounts of photographers I used to watch, and nearly all of them stopped posting in 2018-19.

That said, the site is so much better in every respect than instagram, that I feel compelled to keep using it. There are also literally thousands of great photographers still on the site, even if it does suck that so many more have left in the past few years. I see good work every time I log in.
 
Mos6502 said:
The problem with flickr groups is a lot of people started groups which became popular years ago, and have left the site without ever choosing any backup mods. So a lot of groups go completely unmaintained, and overrun with off-topic content, or if they're moderated groups, they haven't had anything approved in years. Unfortunately there is no way to transfer ownership of an abandoned group. If my understanding is correct, if the founding member's account is deleted, the group gets transferred to the oldest account which exists with the group, but obviously this usually just means it ends up in the hands of another dormant user.

When Yahoo sold the site, a lot of the user base in Asia stopped using it, as well when the new owners ended the 1 terabyte of free uploads and threatened accounts with deletion, a good chunk of people just stopped using the site. I go through my faves and check the accounts of photographers I used to watch, and nearly all of them stopped posting in 2018-19.

That said, the site is so much better in every respect than instagram, that I feel compelled to keep using it. There are also literally thousands of great photographers still on the site, even if it does suck that so many more have left in the past few years. I see good work every time I log in.
Click to expand...
So much truth here. I'm a member of many groups where the mods fell asleep or otherwise lost interest. There's rampant spamming of groups with irrelevant images.

Example: I'm a member of the Fuji Natura group. As many of you will know, the Fujifilm Natura is an awesome film compact with a 24mm f1.9 lens, primarily marketed to young women in Japan who wanted to capture events with their friends. The Natura came in the S variant, which came in colours like pink and light blue, and the Black variant, which had a little rubber grip and was aimed at men.

Because 'natura' is the italian word for nature, the group was massively spammed by idiotic Italians who never looked at the group content and just blasted their waterfalls, landscapes and flowers into it. A couple of us managed to get in contact with the group owner who made us moderators, and we spent hours cleaning the group pool of every last flower, tree and landscape. I went one step further, and removed/banned anyone who tried to post more landscape photos. I even removed many subscribers with Italian names. Now the group has traffic from maybe three or four posters, but they are all on topic.
 
Archiver said:
I even removed many subscribers with Italian names. Now the group has traffic from maybe three or four posters, but they are all on topic.
Click to expand...
Guess I’ll have to stay away from it then! 😅

Ps: just checked the group pool, and you’re spot on. People are way too lazy to read, and some just do not give a s***t.
 
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I've had a Flickr account since about 2007-2008. I don't participate in groups very much, I mostly use it as a means for web-serving photographs I want to post. It works well for that, and a pro account with unlimited storage is inexpensive. For Example:


Bronze Horse at Triton Art Museum - Santa Clara 2024
Hasselblad 500CM + Makro-Planar 120mm f/4
NONS Camera InstaxSQ back
Fuji InstaxSQ B&W film

It works well. I do conversation elsewhere and use the links from Flickr to present photos wherever else I might need them.

G
 
AntonioC said:
Guess I’ll have to stay away from it then! 😅

Ps: just checked the group pool, and you’re spot on. People are way too lazy to read, and some just do not give a s***t.
Click to expand...
I assure you that if you join, I will not remove you. Not unless you spam the group with flowers and landscapes taken with a DSLR. 😆
 
Flickr has the distinction of being the most old-school site of its type, which I count as a good thing. Groups are simple, your timeline is in actual time order, and ads are just ads, not suggested posts insidiously steering you into slightly different but adjacent topics on the platform so you never know if what you're seeing is really what you signed up to see.

The 1k photo allotment in free is more than enough for me, I use Flickr to cull and curate my photos in addition to hosting and linking to them. I hover around 500 photos most of the time.

While there is a lot of cruft from more popular times, particularly in the discussion threads in groups, many groups still have a lot of active participants in terms of photos posted and, as others have said, the subject groupings of groups can be extremely cool. Some are thematic, some are gear oriented, some are stylistic.
 
agentlossing said:
Flickr has the distinction of being the most old-school site of its type, which I count as a good thing. Groups are simple, your timeline is in actual time order, and ads are just ads, not suggested posts insidiously steering you into slightly different but adjacent topics on the platform so you never know if what you're seeing is really what you signed up to see.

The 1k photo allotment in free is more than enough for me, I use Flickr to cull and curate my photos in addition to hosting and linking to them. I hover around 500 photos most of the time.

While there is a lot of cruft from more popular times, particularly in the discussion threads in groups, many groups still have a lot of active participants in terms of photos posted and, as others have said, the subject groupings of groups can be extremely cool. Some are thematic, some are gear oriented, some are stylistic.
Click to expand...
One of the problems of group discussions in Flickr is that they became less easy to find when they changed their layout some years ago. Now, you have to click through to your groups list, then click another tab to access the list of group discussions. Before, it was easier to find.

I tend to write individual descriptions and stories to go with my uploads, and the old flickr layout showed the first few lines, rather like IG does now. After the change, flickr photos in a photostream or group became tiled, with no visible descriptions. Now, very few people read the descriptions unless they click on the photo directly. I wish flickr would make photo descriptions immediately visible again. Those things aside, I'm happy to stay with flickr. I've even made friends on flickr by commenting on someone's post, then going to message later.
 
I agree on Flickr still being very much relevant, apart from old groups which have mostly died of natural causes. I’m still baffled by the very photo.net I enjoyed since the late nineties still being active! That was, at the time, a lively site for education, gallery show off and critique and, of course, some banter… I miss it a lot.
Speaking of the current Flickr, I’m struggling to link pictures here the way I did in the past. Upon selecting the share button I used to be given some html code which worked pretty well on RFF, with a link to the photo stream underneath the pic. Now it doesn’t look to be working for me. How are you guys doing it nowadays?
 
In Flickr I press the "download symbol" (downward pointing arrow under the picture), choose the format, copy the picture with the mouse, go to RFf and drop the picture somewhere.

Like this:

gelatin silver print (nokton 50mm f1.1) leica m2

Amsterdam Artis, 2024

1709810428187.png


In general I think the photos in RFf are way too big. I like to see the composition in one go.

You should also have more time to remove or retouch the photo. Now that time is one hour. Way too short, I wish that time was a month.
 
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AntonioC said:
I agree on Flickr still being very much relevant, apart from old groups which have mostly died of natural causes. I’m still baffled by the very photo.net I enjoyed since the late nineties still being active! That was, at the time, a lively site for education, gallery show off and critique and, of course, some banter… I miss it a lot.
Speaking of the current Flickr, I’m struggling to link pictures here the way I did in the past. Upon selecting the share button I used to be given some html code which worked pretty well on RFF, with a link to the photo stream underneath the pic. Now it doesn’t look to be working for me. How are you guys doing it nowadays?
Click to expand...
Select the BBCODE option.
 
I've become great friends with a woman and interesting photographer who lives in Canada - would have never found her without Flickr!
Been on Flickr for several years and posted regularly until recent domestic circumstances have restricted my photo taking. Nevertheless I look most days and always find something that grabs my attention and gets me asking questions. However the number of viewers and posters in the Groups that particularly interest me does seem to have decreased in the last year or so. I wonder if the age profile of Flickr users is increasing and hence there is a natural drop in active participants.
 
Mos6502 said:
The problem with flickr groups is a lot of people started groups which became popular years ago, and have left the site without ever choosing any backup mods. So a lot of groups go completely unmaintained, and overrun with off-topic content, or if they're moderated groups, they haven't had anything approved in years. Unfortunately there is no way to transfer ownership of an abandoned group. If my understanding is correct, if the founding member's account is deleted, the group gets transferred to the oldest account which exists with the group, but obviously this usually just means it ends up in the hands of another dormant user.

When Yahoo sold the site, a lot of the user base in Asia stopped using it, as well when the new owners ended the 1 terabyte of free uploads and threatened accounts with deletion, a good chunk of people just stopped using the site. I go through my faves and check the accounts of photographers I used to watch, and nearly all of them stopped posting in 2018-19.

That said, the site is so much better in every respect than instagram, that I feel compelled to keep using it. There are also literally thousands of great photographers still on the site, even if it does suck that so many more have left in the past few years. I see good work every time I log in.
Click to expand...
I agree with your assessment. In fact, I have taken over moderation duties on a couple of groups after the original mods decided to leave. I check and upload to Flickr nearly every day. I'm seeing lots of good work there, w/out having the distractions of reels, ads, and videos that seem to proliferate on IG.
 
AlexMogens said:
You may be missing 'Groups,' I think that's the real key to Flickr. I'm not personally aware of any other platform that offers curated photographic 'pools' that reflect various aesthetic outlooks. I prefer this human touch to IG's algorithms. Flickr is also a much better environment for viewing photography, you can see photos at higher resolution and generally there's just a much more favorable signal to noise ratio.
Click to expand...
Agree. Groups are what drive views to your images. I know of no other platform that has something as effective. Imagine setting up your own photo web site. How are you going to get eyes on page without some device like this?
 
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