My Experience with Flickr: LJ 5

With social media usage rapidly increasing and smartphone camera quality constantly improving, it has “never been easier or, quite frankly, more fun to take photos” (Phungglan, 2021). It is now common to have tens of thousands of photos on your camera roll. Along with capturing and storing the photos, sharing them with family, friends, and the public has also become popularized. This fittingly led to a surge in demand for ways to organize and share a high volume of photos, and photo-sharing channels have thus become increasingly important. The readings for week 7 discussed photo-sharing platforms, techniques, benefits, and functions.

I thought it was interesting to learn about the various photo-sharing platforms and their different aspects. Sharing photos is something almost everyone does, and knowing the proper ways to do so is important. You may want to share some photos with specific people, keep some photos private and limit their access, or have them shared publicly for anyone to see. Different platforms fulfill different photo sharing needs. Google Photos, Amazon Photos, Dropbox, and iCloud Photos are some of the commonly mentioned private sharing platforms, while Flickr, SmugMug, and PhotoBlog were some of the public and online photo-sharing sites (Phungglan, 2021). 

I normally use iCloud Photos and Google Photos for my photo sharing needs. Additionally, I got the opportunity to familiarize myself with Flickr for this week’s assignment. I have always been aware of the platform and infrequently used it in the past to look at photos, but I had never posted on it myself.  I created an album with photos of my dog and embedded it onto my blog. Flickr was very easy to navigate, and it is a great place to share many photos online at once. You can share any albums or photos with specific people while also having them present on your public page. You can also edit photos within Flickr, share straight to other social media platforms, and like and comment on the platform itself.

I enjoyed using Flickr and think it is a great platform, but I honestly do not see myself being very active on it in the future. My accounts are already integrated with Google Photos and iCloud Photos, and there is no need for me to bring in another platform into my photo-sharing usage. I have no need for a public/online platform because that is what I use social media for. I also do not know of many people who use Flickr, making the likelihood of my frequent usage of it even less. 

Phungglan, J. (2021, September 22). The 20 best photo sharing sites and apps in 2021. Backlight. Retrieved May 3, 2022, from https://backlightblog.com/photo-sharing-websites-apps