10 Flashy Flickr Tips: Detailed
Tagging, Privacy Settings, More
If you’re an avid photographer or a rabid photo organizer, or if you just
love looking through photo albums, Flickr is the social network for you. It’s
the most widely used free online photo sharing service, thanks to its
user-friendly organization tools and straightforward tagging system. The site
uses an algorithm to rank the “interestingness” of photos, which helps photos
explorers find stunning images and lets users search by tags, so you can find
plenty of kitties to turn into Internet memes. Flickr recently updated its
photo pages to put more emphasis on the individual photos while still keeping
the tools for tagging, geotagging, adding people, and blogging close at hand.
1. Tag your photos
Tagging your photos properly is essential for helping your friends and
others find your pictures. Use tags to describe where a photo was taken, what’s
in it, the image size, and what camera you used. For tags with two or more
words, use quotation marks. For example, an image on Flickr of a man on a park
bench included tags such as “urban,” “sun flare,” “nyc,” “iPhone,” and “black
and white.”
2. Use a Flickr slideshow in your blog
Linking to a set of Flickr images from your blog is one thing, but if you’ve
created a blog to show off the newest member of your family, a slideshow of
baby’s first Christmas is the way to go. The site flickrslideshow.com creates a
customizable slideshow of your images based on tags and text in them and
generates the HTML code to put in your blog.
3. Geotag your vacation photos
Your friends will never have to ask where you took that picture again. After
uploading your images to Flickr, click on Actions and select Add your map. Drag
and drop your picture on the map or enter a town or address to pinpoint your
photo’s location. You can even geotag entire photo sets from the Maps tab under
Organize & Create.
4. Join a Flickr group to share your photos and get inspiration
Part of the fun of Flickr is sharing your photos and seeing others’ visual
interpretations of a place. Join a group by clicking on Groups at the top of a
page. Search for what you’re interested in or what you have photos of, such as
cats, sunsets, or the Queen Mary 2.
5. Post Flickr images and videos to Twitter
and/or to your own blog
Go to Your Account, click on Sharing & Extending, scroll down to Your
Blogs and click Configure your Flickr-to-blog settings. Then choose Set up your
blog and enter the necessary info. Flickr supports Blogger, LiveJournal,
TypePad, WordPress, and Twitter. Once your blog’s account has been linked with
Flickr, simply click Blog It from the Share This bar above photos to tweet them
or add them to your blog.
6. Keep your photos private
One of the best things about Flickr is its front-and-center privacy
controls, which you can easily modify when you upload images. You can set
photos to be viewed by only you, your friends, family, or all Flickr users.
Likewise, you choose who can comment and who can add notes, tags, and people.
Specify your settings under the Privacy & Permissions tab under Your
Account.
7. Easy e-mail uploading
Don’t have time to log in to Flickr or want to quickly send a photo from
your phone? On the Emails & Notifications tab under Your Account, Flickr
can generate an e-mail address to which you can directly send photos. Flickr
can also generate specific e-mails for sending photos to Twitter and your
Flickr blog.
8. Upload photos from your smart phone
Both FlickrFree for Android and Flickr for iPhone allow you to directly
upload and download photos and browse through all your photos and sets. Flickr
for iPhone also supports geotagging and instant uploads to Twitter.
9. Bring certain contacts closer
Click on a contact’s name or go to their photostream, and Flickr will state
your relationship with another user as contact, friend, or family. Click on
edit to change your relationship. Promoting a contact to friend or family will
give him or her access to any photos, comments, or tags that you’ve assigned as
friends or family only.
10. Tag your Flickr friends in your photos
Much like Facebook, Flickr lets you tag your Flickr contacts in your photos
along with friends who are not on Flickr. Just click Add a Person under the
Actions menu. Flickr notifies both members and non-members via e-mail that they
have been added to a picture. Want to remain anonymous? Click the X next to
your screen name under the People in this Photo section and no one (except for
you) will be able to re-add your name.
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