Has Flickr had its day?

[LotusX]

I replied earlier this evening to the post by Rajah Sulayman on 500px, and it got me thinking about Flickr and if it remains the best place to show off your photos to a wider audience.

As I have intimated I am still learning. I have some good shots, some not so good and some down right awful. Every now and again there is that one shot I think yup that will go onto Flickr.

I have posted a couple of shots recently and submitted to a few groups, and not a sausage. The views are very low and no comments. Now if nobody likes the picture that is fair enough but I am worried this is a wider problem in that people are starting to move away from Flickr. On looking through groups there are nowhere near the same amount of pictures being uploaded as this time last year, the activity seems to me to be lower.

I approve of 500px in that it is people's best work, and the best photographers are obviously drawn to that, but this may leave a group of people striving to get better, but not getting the constructive comments which they need to give them that reassurance that they are on the right track. ( I am one of these people)

I would like to know, is it just me do I need to get myself some more contacts, become more active in the community side, take better pictures, post to more groups? Is Flickr as busy as it has always been, am I just not looking the in the right places. Or has Flickr had its day.

If Flickr is not the best place for people like me, where is there for us (there must be more than just me) to go.

The things you ponder of a Friday evening....

Thank you in advance.

Aileen

[Izzy]

Flickr has to go in the toilet. I just joined at the beginning of summer. Everything I join aside from DPS goes right in the toilet after I join.

[Phoenix_Jackson]

I don't know about the history of Flickr but as soon as I got my camera, I asked around and it was strongly recommended by 3 friends. Posting picture after picture I got nothing. Joining groups, posting pictures, commenting games and what not, all I get are, "Oh I like it," "I love this one," "this is my fave,"... what a disappointment. If I knew it'd turn out like this I wouldn't have bothered registering to flickr. My facebook already gets too much of such comments. So I kept searching for sites that really fits the "Learning and Growing" category and got here. And I'm glad.

[JohnT]

I use it for the storage of my photos not for adulation of my work because frankly I don't care what other people think of my shots. I don't think I have posted five or six on this site. To me it is about learning and loving photography and loving the shots you take. Needing someone else's approval should be the last thing to worry about. I know when I have nailed a shot and those I sometimes print or at the very least keep on a DVD so I don't lose them.

I get more out of others work and composition and comments than posting mine looking for approval. Perhaps it is because I am not interested in selling any or displaying in a gallery but just enjoying the art of it.

[kirbinster]

If you just post a picture you will likely get little notice. Its sort of like selling a car by parking it in your driveway without a for sale sign. You have to post the picture to groups and get a bunch of contacts that follow you. You also need to select a title that will motivate people to look at it and put lots of keywords. For key words just select (nude, sex, orgy, girls, tits, etc....) and you will get lots of hits

[Biomech]

I've never been a fan of flickr or deviant art, they are fair too much trouble to maintain. I literally have a flickr account to dump examples of stuff to post here etc, and to use to store photos that are incorporated into website widgets so I don't have to use my own bandwidth to host :P

[sk66]

Flickr alone is just an online storage/ viewing host. Some groups will have an active community, most will start out ok then die.

If you want sharing and encouragement, try groups on RedBubble (or the Sys section here). But if you want participation, you have to participate.

Forums like this are best for critique and advancing your skills. But even then you need to post in the right sections and ask for help.

[kirbinster]

Flickr offers a very cheap off-site backup of your photos. A pro account costs $25 a year, and allows you to upload and store an infinite number of full size jpeg photos. I currenly have over 12,000 images saved there. I consider that very cheap insurance of my photos. Obviously I have my own backups, but this is just an added measure of insurance.

[Aegea]

Try photosig.