To Flickr or Not to Flickr?

I met a photographer the other day and over a cup of coffee, we got onto the subject of whether or not working photographer’s should put their work up on Flickr.

Initially I used Flickr to showcase some of my work and to help provide some SEO juice to my main web site – www.thomaspickard.com

Then after one too many requests for ‘free usage’ or ‘we can give you a photo credit’, I decided to take my work down. I continued to use Flickr to share photos with family and friends through invitation only galleries. Something I still do, to a certain extent.

Not long after, I had my work accepted by the newly opened Photoshelter Collection.

Run by Photoshelter, the Photoshelter Collection was really one way of crowd sourcing imagery from both amateur, serious hobbyist and working photographers. Part of the rationale being, that a lot of the stock available at the time was too stocky; too stale and too boring. Less than a year later, the Photoshelter Collection closed its doors.

A couple of months before the Photoshelter Collection closed its doors, Getty Images and Flickr announced a partnership. The partnership was in essence, Getty editors scouring the Flickr universe to find salable imagery (read: crowdsourcing). Later, Getty let people apply to the Flickr Collection and more recently, they have made a very public call for submissions.

Now I am not saying slap up your work on Flickr in the hope that Getty may email you asking to submit it to the Flickr Collection. Instead, what I am saying is that the times are changing and the deal between Getty and Flickr is a great example of this. As a working photographer I care less about how people find me and more about people actually finding me. And by me, I mean the imagery I have for licensing for publication and commercial uses.

If Flickr helps get more people to my door, or to the imagery I have with Getty Images available for licensing, then great!

In my mind it doesn’t matter how people find you. As long as they do. If you can use Flickr to help people do that, then you should.

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