Today I bit the bullet and bought a pro Flickr account. This was partially inspired by the awesome time I had taking photographs at a get-together for Brian and Melanie on Sunday. You can see those photos at my photostream. And if you happen to be one of the people of whom I put a picture up, let me know if you’d rather I take it down. Except for Kelly, because the picture of Kelly is way too awesome. 
This is one of my all-time favorite shots. These flowers were sitting on a table, and Brian happened to notice that the sunlight had thrown an awesome spotlight on them. So I seized the opportunity.
March 18th, 2006 at 12:27 am
I have a question: if someone has server space, what is the advantage of using flickr? I have never used flickr before, but have seen that many others use it. Any thoughts on this? Thanks!
March 18th, 2006 at 1:17 am
This is a great question… and one that I wondered about myself before I started using Flickr. I do not think that using Flickr would necessarily be advantageous for everyone, but it has become one of my favorite things on the web.
I dont’ know how familiar you are with Flickr, but here’s the gist: Flickr is not just a place to host your photos; it is a place to display your photos, and to allow other people to interact them. It’s almost more like a forum than a image-hosting site. Flickr’s tags allow you to describe your photo in a way that lets people who are searching for similar things find it, and Flickr’s groups are a fun way to put your photos into groups of similar photos by other people. Both of these things increase traffic to your photostream, and often therefore to your website.
From my experience with it so far, Flickr seems to host a community of people who are genuinely interested in photography and capturing moments of their life through it. Sure, there are wierdos on there, just like any other website, but it is very fun to put your photos out there for other people to enjoy.
Also, from a practical standpoint, I find Flickr to be a very good companion to my blog. People visit my blog from Flickr, and Flickr from my blog, and it allows me a neat place to organize my photos into albums I can link to from here, without the effort of formatting them on my own site. Maybe that’s just laziness, but it seems to save time.
So, in short, if you’re only interested in having a place to park your photos, and you have server space, than it may make more sense to host your photos yourself. But if you’re interested in entering your photos into a dialogue with other Flickr users, and in possibly gaining more traffic to your blog, then Flickr is awesome.
Hope that helps! Oh, and thanks for visiting my site! I noticed you are a Christian; so am I.
My brother was also considering going to Regent. Small world, eh?
March 19th, 2006 at 11:38 am
Very helpful answer, thanks! I really enjoy photography but have just always either put pics up on my blog or photoblog and that is about it. Sounds like something I should really check into. I didn’t realize there was such a community aspect behind it.
So my next question would be (and I suppose I could just check their site, but talking to a real person is also quite helpful): what is the difference between the free and paid account?
Regent is a wonderful place!! I am not going into “professional” ministry (but we are all ministers in a sense, eh?), but Regent has been an amazing place to grow and learn. I have definitely been blessed by it and the people here.
March 20th, 2006 at 3:08 pm
Sorry I took so long to respond, Matt. You may have already gotten the answer to your question, but I’ll take a stab at it anyway…
First of all, Flickr answers this question in their FAQ here. So those are the technical details: More bandwith, space for unlimited high resolution photos, and unlimited photosets.
All of those reasons influenced my decision to upgrade to a pro account. The more I got to know Flickr, the more I liked it, and I realized that after only a month or two of having it I had almost reached the 200 photo limit of the free account.
That simply wouldn’t do. Also, one of the most attractive things to me about the pro account was the unlimited number of photosets. (Just in case you don’t know, the photosets are the little albums you can organize your photos into; they are linked by those little white boxes to the left of your photostream.) I love to organize things, and it’s very nice to be able to seperate my photos into more than three sets.
Oh, also, a one-year pro account only costs $25.00 (US). Seems like a bargain to me!
I hope that’s what you were looking for. Good luck!
March 20th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Thanks, that is extremely helpful! I could see that the free account could exhaust itself very quickly. I have started up an account, I guess I will just have to see how it goes! Thanks a lot for your help.