After plenty of years of photography I finally decided to board the Flickr train – sure I am five years late to the game, but I thought I would write about my experience. In short, Flickr, in my humble opinion, is virtually flawless. Rather than ramble on I will organize my thoughts for you – read on for more!
Easy uploading. At the moment I am using a Mac with iPhoto and Aperture installed. I am well aware of Flickr plug-ins that are available for these two applications, but the Flickr Desktop Uploadr works brilliantly! You simply drag the photo from the respective application, or folder, and drop it on the uploader. From there you can edit tags, descriptions, add to a set, create sets and more. The photos are then automatically uploaded at the click of a button.
Rich Web app. Flickr goes far beyond allowing users to upload and display their photos. The organization tool behaves just like its desktop counterpart by allowing drag-and-drop, image sliders, collection creation and more. One major step forward is the integration of the Picnik online photo editor. The seamless Picnik integration gives users the ability to crop, enhance, adjust exposure, and apply cool effects all within the browser!
Pro account. As with most storage-heavy Web applications Flickr gives users the opportunity to upgrade from the free account, which should be more than enough for most users, to a Flickr Pro account. Flickr Pro offers unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, ad-free browsing, original file access, statistics and more for $24.95 per year. When I noticed that I would be closing in my 100MB monthly allowance it was a no-brainer to upgrade. The statistics that are offered fully satisfy my desire to collect and analyze data regarding everything I put on the Web.
Sure there are a few features I would like to see, watermarking and better quality control for example, but so far I am very impressed with what Flickr offers. I have already connected with a few people and it is great to finally be a contributor to the forerunner in online photography. I welcome any insight/recommendations that may make my experience even more rich!
Almost forgot! I encourage you to connect with my Flickr Photostream!
Decided to drop by and read about your Flickr experience thus far. I have to say, you’ve learned a whole lot in the last, what is it, 2 days? HAha. I never knew there was a desktop uploader for Mac in order to upload photos onto flickr. I’ve been doing it the old fashion way, by clicking upload and adding the files manually by clicking here and there to upload everything. But thanks to this I found out about their uploader! Which I have just installed onto my macbook. Did I say how much I love macs?? lol
) But kudos to you! You’re photography is really wonderful, and super inspiring. Makes me want to go out on a photo walk with my friends and use my new dslr 
By the way, how do you find Aperture? I’ve been considering for the longest time whether or not I should get it. For now, I will stick with iPhoto and Photoshop 
And by the way, I’ve never seen someone upload so many photos in the last few days and switch over to the Pro version of flickr so soon! (I still use the free version
@Sherry
Thank you very much for your comment! I still don’t understand how I could be so in touch with the Web, but not have a Flickr account until now. I was always playing around with sites like pBase, SmugMug and others, but just didn’t find what I wanted at a good price – I think Flickr is what I have been after.
Wow! I am impressed that you were manually uploading photographs for so long. The uploader is very seamless and handles a great number of photos at a time with ease. Haha, glad to hear you like Macs…I made the switch last year and have greatly enjoyed it, but I am not one to really preach a specific system as I constantly switch between Linux and Mac systems (sorry, no Windows right now, but I *LOVE* Windows 7 from what I have experienced thus far).
Thank you for commenting on my photography! It is something I have enjoyed for the last few years and just haven’t really gotten around to sharing my photos beyond immediate family – kind words such as yours drive me to do even more. I really like Aperture, but it is a memory hog. Even with 4GB of RAM it can chug at time when processing massive RAW files. All of the photos I have uploaded so far are just JPEGs with little-to-no post-processing. When it comes time to print said photos, I will definitely be jumping into some intense RAW editing. While Aperture and Lightroom can give a lot of control (specifically if you don’t own Photoshop), photo programs like iPhoto and even Picasa are capable of 95% of my needs. I wouldn’t suggest moving from your iPhoto+Photoshop combo.
I would like to point my readers to Sherry’s AMAZING artwork at Esty!!