Photography

I’ve been on since 2005. I didn’t post anything for years but recently got back on. I’m finding it pretty enjoyable so far, but it feels lonely sometimes, like uploading photos into the void.

I just started an account as I’m getting more into photography and I really enjoy the community actually. I’ve had a lot of good responses to my photos and getting one on Explore is a good boost for me. https://flickr.com/photos/199071291@N03

I miss the golden days of social sharing. I used to be super active on 500px. I can even say that my desire to be at the top improved my hobby. Once they aggressively started monetizing, the site lost its mojo—too many bots, mutual boosting, etc.

It's great to hear that people are heading to Flickr. So many nostalgic memories. I will create an account today.

Thank you everyone for all these helpful answers! I'm reading through each one and I really appreciate them. It looks like Flickr is still good

i like Flickr quite a bit.

Have you considered just setting up your own website?

I had a Flickr account years ago. Literally just logged in for the first time in a long time after reading this post. Everything I ever uploaded has gone. Did it stop for a while and restart?

Flickr has become the World Photo Archive by now. It has gone through a few hands and is pretty stable since the McAskill family bought it in 2018.

• pro: there is no "more relevant photo archive" because of the sheer numbers and variety. You may say: "yeah, but most of that is family and holiday shots taken on phone-cameras" and you're right. But that's what documenting life really is about. Nothing else is as complete. And the number of EXCELLENT photographers showing and archiving their shots on Flickr is incredible, too
• con: you only reach people who are somewhat into photography. Flickr isn't IG, no random passer-by will stumble over a shot of yours and you can't really advertise your portfolio. Most Flickr members really are there for their own work before looking at yours. That only changes when you are interested enough in photography to spend time on other photographer's pictures, in searching through groups and galleries.

I have a pro account and so far about 110 million hits on my work (around 70'000 per day in average 2023) - it's a clear indication that there are A LOT of people on Flickr and interested in photography

https://www.flickr.com/photos/stefanschmitz/

I still use it (since 2009). It's gone through a lot, but for me it's still the best way to have images accessible and create galleries. If I were more active as a community member, I believe there would also be a decent interaction as there was before. All in all, I vote yes. Leave us a link so we can follow you if you decide to make it. :)

yeah it's fantastic. The film photography community is the best.

Flickr is one of the few places where I feel like photos are posted as photos for people to enjoy, and not just to get likes. Some people have amazing looking galleries on there.

I love Flickr, it just does what other sites don't do, allows me to share my photos in a way that makes sense to me. I think people using it as file space for all their photos rather than carefully curated content contributed to its initial downfall, and I was completely annoyed by Yahoo forcing me to have a Yahoo account. When it was bought by Verizon I pulled all my content and deleted my account. I've come back to it since it was purchased by the SmugMug people and am considering paying for a pro account but am managing with a free one at the moment.

Been using Flickr since 2007. What else is there to use?

Also, when POTN closes down I'm gonna have to find another site to post on. Reddit will never replace the old school forums for me. Maybe I'll have to switch over to FM forums.

I use Flickr. I like it quite well.

If you're interested, check out Glass, too. There are apps for Android, IOS and Windows.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ddrane8284/

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here is mine, I am on the pro plan but this may be my last year on it. I have continued to rely on it to get a photo out there.

It’s how I deliver my photos to clients. For the price, can’t beat it.

yes, you have pointed out exactly why it's still useful -- not owned by Meta, a decent UI (not like Imgur lol)...and it's pretty easy to send links to you photos and to create albums.

If you are a free user, you'll be limited to something like 1000 photos? The subscription for "pro" is fairly pricey, but I have still continued to subscribe as the price has climbed.

I really like Flickr for both film and digital photography. I pay for the pro and as another post mentioned I find it useful for researching gear and film stocks.

It is! As someone who has used it since 2007 I can’t imagine why more don’t. First, there are no ads if you pay. Second, I have access on my phone or any computer to all of my work that I’ve uploaded there in high res that I can download and access anywhere I am. I aggressively tag my shots in Lightroom and those tags are in the metadata and go to Flickr. So I can find any shot based on a simple search. Plus once you find other people who are active it is a very vibrant community.

Flickr is still somehow usable as it was 10 years ago.

And this is what I find super weird about it and other somehow older bigger sites like pinterest and some others who were amazing 10 years ago and since then, not really improved for the user. This is for me beyond imagination. Why, really why the F. they stopped improving for the user - if I visit these sites they are really like 10 years ago with the same problems and also benefits. It is like they dismissed all their developers 10 years ago and just had one for some marketing lipstick and nothing more. I really don't get this... why they stopped improving.

Yes, Flickr is still useful and there are still good photographers using it. As someone else before me said, the film photography community is the best.

I suggest looking at Behance as well.

I use 500x.com , there is free and paid plains.

Flickr is a great platform to begin with and you can use the Flickr storage as a backend for your own website. It's not as fast as using an image CDN, but the speed difference is not that noticeable.

Take a look at Nanogallery: https://nanogallery2.nanostudio.org/. With some very basic PHP/HTML skills and understanding of JavaScript you can go a long way.

Flickr is still useful, but I personally prefer Smugmug (who bought Flickr some years ago).

I haven't used Flickr in a while, but I still get the occasional fave or even comment (that are not bots) on my older stuff.

Compared to my photography twitter account which sees nothing on my old posts, or my IG which sees next to nothing also, personally I'd say Flickr is still the most useful.

It’s pretty much the only thing I use. Instagram is terrible, but Flickr has remained pretty damned good.

I still use Flickr and even pay for it. I don't use it to browse other people's photos much, but I did join groups for all the different lenses I use/want to buy to help research. Flickr is also great for sharing pictures with family members - I turn on the download option and they can grab full size jpegs.

I find Flickr very useful when considering a lens or body. Using the search feature to filter by type narrows it down to what other people have shot. You get a good mix of art shots and snapshots.

I still pay for Flickr - like others have said, it's very easy to share with other people, especially people not on the platform. There's also integration with Lightroom, which makes it incredibly simple to upload images. Stats are fun, despite the fact that I don't really know how to use the information to increase my own visibility. I found out that a college professor uses one of my images on their coursework website, which was neat (I CC-license all my digital work).

Potential downsides - a while back, the site changed their policy on "visibility" to encourage more public-facing images, so I think there's now a limit on how many images you can set to private or restricted viewing. (Maybe this has changed again, it doesn't really affect me much so I lost track of where this is at.) I also find discoverability a little challenging, especially with regards to Groups; specifically, I want to be able to browse lots of Groups and I can't figure out how to do that. The "community" stuff in general still seems to be lacking a bit, but maybe I'm using it wrong.

Reminds me of a comment from several years ago on a post about the future of flickr that i agreed with:

Slight off topic but a lot of people hate the site and welcome its demise but i still use flickr because i can't find anything else that does what it does, it's not perfect but it feels like a website made for photographers.

Sure other sites can do some of these but a list of things i like about it: -

• Albums & collections: very easy to create and organize, makes finding things later on much nicer, just wish more people used collections though.

• Tagging: Works very much like lightroom and can even pull LR tags automatically. The ability to search my own tags and narrow down by tags, flickr even adds its own ones and you can search by pre-dominant colour in a photo. I can go to a list of all my tags when trying to find all photos from a particular camera, film, place etc. very useful.

• EXIF: If photo has exif data it's clearly displayed on the page and i can click through for extensive exif data as well. If a photo has GPS data in it there is a world map there and you can quickly drill down to where it was taken.

• Easily select various sized copies or the original, if made available, and the share button has various options for social media sites, email and bbcode for forums, very nice.

• Privacy settings are varied enough and useful, public/private/friends/family, change who is allowed to comment or add tags.

• Select what kind of copyright (or lack thereof) i want on photos, has 9 different options to quickly select from.

• Stats page for each photo with graphs and even where the viewers came from, there is also a summary stats page where i can see various things about all my photos. The Recent Activity page as well, lets me see if anyone has commented or favourited any photos so i can quickly respond.

• People page, you can see the most recent 5 photos from people you follow, makes it easy to keep up with their activity as not everyone is prolific.

While professionals will still be better off with their own personal websites on other hosts, flickr, for the most part, does feel like a site made for photographers, not social media snapshots and engagement farming, though they have tried to court that, it still at the core offers a feature set not available on other hosts that i am personally familiar with.

I love using Flickr when I’m looking at a new lens. It’s great to get an idea of what kind of framing I’ll be able to get from a particular lens. I haven’t posted in nearly a decade, but it is nice to use when I need it.

For what you want to use it for, Flickr is still the best option!

I recently started to revive mine, and frankly should've used it for a link I posted this morning instead of 500px :P

Been a Flickr pro user since 2008, highly recommended as an image host. No bullshit, just does what it is supposed to do… serve your images.

try looking into adobe portfolio. you can set it up and upload bunch of pics/albums under in like 10 mins.

it can basically serve as archive and portfolio at the same time.