Underexposured? Get on Flickr!

Three years ago I said no to Picassa.  I know; sacrilegious to say no to a Google product and go to a Yahoo product! It was called Flickr and though spelled wrong, I navigated through the world of photos.  And then I fell I fell in love, because the vast awesomeness of photography could reach visitors within seconds.

If you are an amateur photographer or professional photographer, Flickr is the largest community of photos online.  Sure, there is Picassa and Smugmug, but they do not have the ability to connect with others like Flickr.  In this article, I am going to cover how to get the most out of your photos in the Flickr community.

Getting started

Uploading photos is a little tricky, that’s why I am covering it. If you know this, scroll down to Getting Exposed.

To upload photos in Flickr, go to You -> Upload photos.  Since you can now batch upload photos, pick a whole bunch and then press on upload.  Let Flickr do its magic.  It will then ask you, “Next:  add a description, perhaps?.”  Click on the link and you arrive at all the newly uploaded photos.

Now is it the time to organize it.  I admit, it’s tedious and even I avoid this task (only later to regret it).

Add Tags -  This allows you add tags that will be all the photos in the set.  If you took a bunch of photos of San Francisco, you should add “San Francisco,” SF, Bay Area.

Add to a a Set – All the photos can be added to a preexisting set or you can create a new set.

Title, Description, Tags – Add personal titles, descriptions, and tags to each photo.  If you know anything about search engine optimization, this is like adding meta data.  If you want anyone to click on your photo in a search engine search, add this data. And add lots of tags, don’t be afraid. Of course, be on topic but if the photo is of a rabbit (like the sample above) use general tags like “rabbit, bunny, fuzzy, furry”, etc to ensure that people would stumble upon a photo when searching.

Once done with this… save!

Getting Exposed

Groups
The awesome part of Flickr comes in with Flickr groups.  There are thousands of groups on Flickr from locations (Stockholm) to camera reviews and equipment (Nikon Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR) to random goodness (Purple Flowers).

You want to add your best photos to groups. The more groups you join, the greater the amount of photos you can add to groups. Okay, some groups do put limits so no one person spams the group.

Make sure to visit Flickr on regular basis to submit photos to groups so that your photos don’t get entirely buried in the deluge.

Interact with others
Like any social community, chatting/interacting with other people is the way it survives. In Flickr, photos gain popularity and exposure through commenting and favoriting them.

The more comments a photo receives, the more popular it becomes and higher it will rank on searches. Give feedback and constructive comments because you are demonstrating the ability to be a good contributor. Plus, by commenting on another person’s photo, chances are, they will visit your page. Just think of this like blog commenting.

Same goes for making a photo a favorite by clicking on the pink star. The cool bit is that you can look through any user’s favorites’ photos and see what inspires them. The photos you favorite will then appear in your favorites folder so that you can see them at any time.

You can also chat with others through threads and question groups. Some groups are entirely off topic from photography while others are ‘meet and shoot’ clubs where people decide where to meet and go off to take photos together. Yet, another great way to become more well known in the community.

Figuring out Your Activity

Your home page on Flickr is the second most important page (you’ll find out about the second in a bit).

The left side shows recent activities within your network. The Photostream shows any comments made on your photos, favorites, and any replies on comments you made on other photos. The Contacts section shows latest uploaded photos by your contacts. And, you can guess, the Groups sections shows the latest uploaded photos in some of your groups.

On the right side, is the latest from the Flickr blog. And below is an advertisement for many of Flickr’s third party applications (Moo, etc).

Now it is time to go to the most important page: Stats. See the graph to the right of “Your Photostream?” Pro account users can see statistics on all their photos. You can see number of photo views, favorites, and comments. You can also track the domain referrers. Because you can see the domain referrer, it’s easy to learn how your photo was used. If possible, comment on the post or article where the author used your photo, you can get more exposure again.

What does this all lead to? If you tag your photos well, write good descriptions, participate in community by favoriting and commenting, join groups, then you stand a chance of getting good exposure. Many photographers, especially amateurs are approached to license their photos or even do real shooting. I licensed my photos through people who emailed me via Flickr.

Don’t stand in the dark(room) anymore. Even if you have a professional site, put up your best stuff on Flickr. Chances are people are looking both via the search engines AND in the Flickr community for their next photographer or photo to buy.

About the Author:
Preeti loves taking photos even though she can be lazy at tagging them. She enjoys writing, traveling, and of course taking photos. Her blog, Lost in Stockholm, is about living in Sweden. You can see her favorites photos from Grand Canyon to Narvik, Norway on her blog.

Got questions or comments about using Flickr? Send her a tweet.