Doing More with Photos 12-21-2004
There has been a lot of talk about Flickr lately, but what I found the most intriguing is seeing how people are using it. The central component of the service is its ability to allow people to finally share their digital photos in a more easy and natural manner. It is pretty common for me, and many people I know, to take digital photographs and then do absolutely nothing with them. Since the onset of digital photography this problem has been sought to be solved by a multitude of different software applications and services. So what are they doing wrong and why is Flickr a step in the right direction?
Applications such as Apple’s iPhoto did give me the ability to manage my photos but still only provided me with limited sharing of photos through email, the for pay .mac service (for web publishing), or the printing of a photo album. But there is still something about these methods of sharing photos that are just so sterile, boring, or just time consuming.
One of the things about looking through a physical photo album is the discussion that results from looking at the photos. We talk about the events and the emotions and stories that go along with them. Yet many of the current digital photo services offer little in the communication and sharing component of viewing photos–it’s currently just one way mostly. Although, Flickr–borrowing from the blog format–allows for all photos to be commented on, providing a simple means of communication to discuss a photo. But one of the more interesting aspects about Flickr is group photo sharing. It is fairly common for friends to make doubles of their photos so that they can share photos with friends who may have been at the same event. Flickr groups goes along the same idea, friends can all submit their photos to a particular group thus giving the photo album of an event a broader scope.
Flickr offers a great deal of other cool features as well, which are worth checking out, but more importantly it is great to see that digital photography is beginning to be used more effectively. While we can’t hold these photos in our hands, we certainly can do a lot more than just having them sit in a photo album on a shelf.