The Flickr photo; it's a "style" ???

hey Flickr is what it is. The article is an oversimplification but like all this stuff it has a grain of truth to it. It's pop photography, scrapbooks, family sharing of pix, it's self promotion, sales point and a tonne of other stuff all at the same time.

What's interesting is that flickr is primarily about images not discussion, unlike RFF which is discussion and equipment. For this reason many RFF members are also Flickr members.
 
I love Flickr, but chasing the "interestingness" ratings can be dangerously addictive and does push towards a paticular style of shot which will stand out of a page full of thumbnails. Alongside the inevitable popularity of pretty females and portraits of cute animals and children, clean strong shapes and saturated colours get noticed. Complex, detailed images and naturalistic colours don't pull in the punters nearly so well. Personally, I find some of the "Flickr style" images really worthwhile, as long as I suspend my twenty years'-worth of conditioning about what a 'good' photograph should look like.

Nobody has to play the Flickr popularity game if they don't want to. And there's so much photography there it's hard not to find other really good stuff without trying too hard.
 
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Ducky said:
A little self promotion and the skills to exploit it
Click to expand...

Sounds like an artist to me!

Granted, Toyota is desperate for any insight into anything youthful...trolling Flickr would be a no-brainer for them. Are the various directors of galleries/museums not looking at Flickr? You bet they are!
 
I am in full agreement with Jan and Matt. Flickr is about sharing photographs (and now short videos). There is a social networking aspect as well.

I use RFF for information sharing (it's strong point) and Flickr for photo sharing (it's strong point). Each sites strengths and weaknesses are complimentary.

There's a lot of garbage as well as a lot of wonderful work on Flickr.

The generic Interestingness in Flickr's Explore[TM] is useless to me.

Here's a tip. Search for a subject you are interested in (bokeh, Noctilux, minimal, abstract, etc.). The default view is "most relevant". Then change the view to "interestingness". Chances are, the result will be photos you find useful. With this method I find Flickrs' rankings have a more specifc meaning.

If a particular photographer's photos appeal to you, go to their page and look at the Groups where they place their photos. Also, people who comment on their work are likely to have photos you will find useful as well.

willie
 
I also find Flickr to be extremely useful in evaluating digital cameras that I may have an interest in. By searching for a particular camera, you can compare the results of many photographers and get a good idea for how good (or not) a camera might be. You could get a bad photographer, but if you have a large sample, that should not skew the data too much.
 
It's not a style. It just is a style that came along as a result of the giant network of people, and I guess in this day and age that is the style people want. Super sharp, colors that pop, and no shadows. hahaha
 
The really interesting thing about the article is the girl in question used Flickr as part of her 'toolbox'. I wonder to what extent Flickr is creating creativity rather than just being an outlet for it.
 
I dunno...to me the article sounded more like it was bashding Rebekka Guoleifsdottir rather than critiquing the medium. This article begs the question, what's the difference between going to galleries and openings to network and gain exposure as opposed to doing it online through a social-networking site?

Anyway, maybe I'm not as savvy as the rest of you guys, but I don't know what the big deal is. In this digital-consumer-youth-driven-youtube-snapshot-short-attention-span-advertising age most people are not as versed and don't understand the fine arts of photography. Most people don't get the contrast of light and shadow and shapes and lines and all that, so it's understandable how the "flickr style" evolved. As a whole, people only knows what looks good and what doesn't. And I'm not too sure this is the result of flickr, but rather the evolution of culture and counter-culture as a whole. As an example of the culture and counter-culture dichotomy, I feel like there's almost a resurgence of interest in film.

Anyway, I think you have to also consider that the times have change, you have to evolve. That's not to say that I'm discounting the classical art teachings or putting a premium on this new "flickr style", but the state of photography has simply evolved. The dark room is gone and digital manipulation is becoming more and more prevalent in bodies work.

Why can't digital images, manipulation and CG graphics be considered as art? I'm sure there was a time when painters would decry photographs as an art form.

Anyway, I'm not trying to draw up a debate or pretend that I'm an expert in anything, and I'm not sure if what I'm saying makes sense to all you guys, but it's something to consider.
 
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flickr IS a style. It became a style of web-living of a great number of people. It's eclectic, fusion of views and tastes, mixture of styles that are forming a general style.

It became a style as iPod (Walkman in previous life), DJ's square bags 10 years ago and all that things each of us can remember from this or that perod of his life.

It's a fashion trend in an ocean of visual information in the web that brought some order to the way the info is kept and used.
Its a visual Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. Anybody can express himself in any way he counts to be right.

Is it good or bad I don't know. I just think that if it exists there was a need in it.
 
The digital age has made "photography" popular to a huge segment of the population that would of never taken the time to learn photography the analog way. A friend of mine who had just bought a new dSLR and found that they always had to take 5 or 6 shots before they got the exposure right when checking the LCD, they commented, I don't understand how people did photography before LCDs. My comment was of course, that they actually had to learn the fundamentals behind the physics of light, and meters, and reciprocity etc... I'm not trying to be a photography snob because I develop my film while standing in a bath tub, but the reason I still love flickr is that every now and again a friend or family member will browse my flickr site site and say to me... "Wow Steve, you actually seem to have a bit of an eye for that... I had no idea." If not for flickr they may of been none the wiser.
 
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