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How Flickr Is Courting the Next Generation of Photographers

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the next-generation dept.

First time accepted submitter Molly McHugh writes Flickr Vice President Bernardo Hernandez explains how the beloved photo platform is targeting a new generation that's addicted to smartphones. “10 or 15 years ago it was expensive and complicated to explore the world of photography,” Hernandez said. "Very few people could afford that—[it is] no surprise the best photographers 20 years ago were older people. We believe all of that is changing with the mobile [photography] revolution."

97 comments

  1. Too late by i+kan+reed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Flickr already missed the boat on being the social media image sharping app of choice.

    So now they're missing the next boat by trying to be that instead. It's like the microsoft infinite loop, but now yahoo instead.

    1. Re:Too late by style7711 · · Score: 2

      There is always room for someone who does it better. Remember when facebook displaced myspace? I'm not saying it is going to happen but it is possible.

    2. Re:Too late by eneville · · Score: 2

      I have never thought of flickr as being a place for sharing images from smartphones. I thought they were an SLR photo gallery. Just never thought of it as a "social" place. Even the 'flickrmail' link is buried a couple of clicks deep. Naw, this is just trying to get headlines. Flickr /was/ amazing. The Yahoo! killed it when try first made flickr integrate with their profile system, then once again when they made them revamp the UI, just like Yahoo! groups was killed with the neo interface. Flickr is currently kept alive by the mass of good photographers there, not the smartphone touting lumbering mass of teenagers.

      --
      Why UNIX?
    3. Re:Too late by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Flickr already missed the boat on being the social media image sharting app of choice.

      FTFY.

  2. Bad Panda by TargetBoy · · Score: 2

    By showing bad panda errors instead of the image requested for months so you get people who want to avoid your site at all costs? Yeah, that's how to court users.

    1. Re:Bad Panda by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      By showing bad panda errors instead of the image requested for months so you get people who want to avoid your site at all costs? Yeah, that's how to court users.

      And by going for infinite-scroll, it's now impossible - unless you want to sit there and scroll for hours on end - to find an event from more than a few days/weeks ago.

    2. Re:Bad Panda by Andrewkov · · Score: 1

      And they still haven't fixed the problem where when you are browsing photos in a busy group it jumps around and refreshes randomly so you keep losing your place.

  3. Expensive and complicated? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I bought my first 16mm camera for less than $10 (the flash cubes were more expensive!). B&W film was cheap, developing the negs was cheap too. I was 11 or so and that was the late 80s. You paid a lot more attention to ISO and shutter speed settings when you had to wait a week for a roll to be developed and find out which shots worked and which ones didn't. By the 90s in high school I could develop my own film, which really just took some minimal education.

    10 - 15 years ago you could get a decent 35mm for under $100 and photo development was cheap and common enough to fully automate at a kiosk in the mall

    SLR / DSLR prices have pretty much kept pace with the times.

    So what exactly was pricey about "exploring the world of photography"?

    1. Re: Expensive and complicated? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's simple. People would much rather spend $650 on an iPhone instead of a DSLR camera. Optical zooms, light filters, tripods, lighting, and alternate lenses don't matter. Cell phone cameras can replace both DSLR and point & shoot cameras.

      It must be true. TechCrunch and my stock broker told me so.

    2. Re:Expensive and complicated? by spire3661 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You are being purposefully obtuse. Not everyone had access to that kind of ongoing capital. A digital camera is a VERY different proposition than film. It is essentially a camera with unlimited film after the initial capital outlay. I know i waited until digital was ready before getting into photography because of this. All of the stuff you listed needs heavy infrastructure, time, deliveries, chemicals etc. With digital all you need is the camera, and a laptop to store them. 10-15 years ago was 1999-2003. I had taken well over 10,000 unique digital pictures by 2003 at a fraction of the cost of film.

      --
      Good-bye
    3. Re:Expensive and complicated? by eneville · · Score: 2

      The glass is always expensive. If you ignore numbers, then even today the glass is more expensive than the digital body, providing you're happy to upgrade the body once a decade (which is fine by me). I'm more interested in high quality stills than if the camera can do 1080p rather than 720. Right now, the way camera manufacturers are getting twitchy about mobile phones replacing SLR cameras, you get some good professional features in the mid-range cameras. The consumer wins right now.

      --
      Why UNIX?
    4. Re:Expensive and complicated? by shmlco · · Score: 1

      "... photo development was cheap and common enough to fully automate at a kiosk in the mall."

      And why, pray tell, would someone who cared about photographic quality process film and make prints at a kiosk in the mall? Crappy processing and crappy prints, and with automated printing and color correction you have no idea as to what the hell went wrong (or right) with your images.

      Shoot pro-grade E100, or Velvia, and you paid $10-12 per roll of film plus $10/roll commercial processing, or at least $20/roll combined. Shoot a dozen rolls at an event, and you just blew through $250 in 1980's dollars.

      So yeah, I'd call it "pricey".

      --
      Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
    5. Re:Expensive and complicated? by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 1

      Well, sort of. There has been a much larger outlay of cash necessary to break into digital photography. You may realize a break even point sooner if you would have shot lot of rolls of film, but the initial barrier to entry is much higher than it was for film cameras, which really only needed to be a light-tight box. Having said that, the price of good digital cameras has come down a lot since the late 90s, so what I observe is more of a trough where film was pretty much phased out yet digital cameras were still really expensive.

      --
      http://www.rootstrikers.org/
  4. Re:SELFIE!! by ClioCJS · · Score: 1

    sounds like you have flickr confused with instragram :D

    --
    -Clio
    Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
    Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
  5. Thankfully, everyone is a photographer now... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Wow, that's a great photo, you must have a very good phone.

    1. Re:Thankfully, everyone is a photographer now... by Cederic · · Score: 2

      You mock, but I know that a lot of my best photographs are because my camera's bloody good, not because I am.

    2. Re:Thankfully, everyone is a photographer now... by tsa · · Score: 2

      It's always 90% photgrapher, 10% equipment. You have to learn to use your equipment, and that holds for a mobile phone as well as a DSLR with good lenses. And you need talent. That's all in the 90%.

      --

      -- Cheers!

  6. laugh by koan · · Score: 3, Funny

    “10 or 15 years ago it was expensive and complicated to explore the world of photography,”

    Polaraoid...
    Instamatic...

    You know like all those shit filter apps in your iPhone...

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:laugh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The first generation iPhone was released on June 29, 2007" which by my count would be about 7 years ago.

    2. Re:laugh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those things were expensive and complicated. Surely no one under the age of five or six could master the necessary skills. I was, myself, not able to do actual darkroom work until I was nine. Nine!

  7. ...the best photographers were older people... by fallen1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Which is still the truth, in general. Photography on a cell phone does not equate to photography with a digital camera -- knowing what f-stop is, or shutter speed, or focal length, or a LOT of the other of the fine-grain minutiae that comes from a lot of time spent with film and digital cameras taking hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs.

    Point and click it ain't.

    --

    Dream as if you'll live forever.
    Live as if you'll die tomorrow.
    ~Anonymous~

    1. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All that experience can be accumulated hundreds of times faster in digital where you can see immediate results. Tomorrow's experts will be more expert than yesterday's experts, just as the 20th century saw huge leaps in athletic performance such as running and swimming races, weight lifting records, etc. There are also thousands of artists today that equal the top handful of masters of old times, it simply isn't acknowledge because it is subjective, and appreciation is inherently relative, in the same way people love 60's sports cars even though they are actually slow and poor-handling.

    2. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      All that experience can be accumulated hundreds of times faster in digital where you can see immediate results.

      I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that for the vast majority. Why worry about composition, aperture, exposure, and white balance when one can burn through dozens upon dozens of photos, previewing the results immediately waiting for something worthwhile to show up, and sort/crop/align later. I've seen this first hand with my daughters and their friends. The shotgun approach may produce the occasional interesting photos but does not lead to refined skills required to produce stunning images.

    3. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by TJ_Phazerhacki · · Score: 1

      While I think that the vast majority of 'cell phone photography' is shite and demonstrates nothing more than the cultural obsession with the idea that we are special, unique, and that other people want to be deluged with our personal experiences, the fine-grain minutiae of technique involving strictly technical methodology is simply a tool, and an out of date one at that. There seems to be just as much of a delusion with photogs about the difference between changing the capturing parameters of an image, and simply post-processing the image to appear the way you want it to, and I suspect that most of the harrumpf'ing comes from people who are upset that you can now do in Photoshop what it used to take thousands and thousands of shots to gain the knowledge to accomplish.

      --
      Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
    4. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Because you may have a limited time frame and only one occasione to get the shot right so you need to know your stuff. Know about depth of field, shutter times and exposure. You can correct exposure some later, but you're not going to get blur out of your precious shot.

    5. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by eneville · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I have to agree with you here. Would you hire a team of teenagers and their smart phones to do your wedding photography? No, I'd put my trust in someone who has decades of experience of photography and knows what makes good wedding photos. Rejecting the rules here is like accepting ISIS education policy.

      --
      Why UNIX?
    6. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      All that experience can be accumulated hundreds of times faster in digital where you can see immediate results. Tomorrow's experts will be more expert than yesterday's experts, just as the 20th century saw huge leaps in athletic performance such as running and swimming races, weight lifting records, etc. There are also thousands of artists today that equal the top handful of masters of old times, it simply isn't acknowledge because it is subjective, and appreciation is inherently relative, in the same way people love 60's sports cars even though they are actually slow and poor-handling.

      Actually, there's something to be said about the "old way". Where it took days from when you took your photo to when you got it back.

      It meant you had to work at your shot - you had to compose it perfectly, get the exposure right and all the other stuff. Then click the frame.

      If you were good, you didn't take extra shots "just in case". You knew that after waiting the few days for the photo to come back, it'll be good.

      Today's digital camera? Just click away mindlessly until it comes out right. Trial and error. Just snap snap snap. You know the drill - after that trip you come back with 10,000 snaps, and then filter out through the whole lot to find the few that are keepers. Because the rest would be garbage.

      Which approach is better? Hard to tell. Though truth be told, equipment actually doesn't matter. National Geographic photographers have intentionally gone on trips equipped with nothing more than an iPhone and still take stunning photos using nothing more than the default camera app.

    7. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by steelfood · · Score: 2

      Heh, yeah, photographers can get more experience in digital format, but your average smartphone of your average person is still not going to cut it.

      You don't need a DSLR anymore, but you do need some decent lenses (the more the better) and manual controls. And then, you can start accumulating experience. Until I can pop a 8mm fisheye or 300mm telephoto or 25mm F1.2 onto a phone, point and click it still isn't.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    8. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by steelfood · · Score: 2

      Oh, I completely forgot my other point besides experience. To even begin to get that kind of experience, you need something that only older (20+) people have: money.

      Unless your parent's have the equipment already (or the money to buy it), you as a teenager probably won't even know a number called the F-stop exists. Hell, I wonder if most teenagers who're snapping away on their phones know what ISO sensitivity is.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
    9. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      This isn't strictly true. Old school photographers learned on theory and then applied it to a situation. Instant feedback is good but I see a lot of new photographers half ass it and just shoot in auto mode ap/tv with out thinking about the image before hand. Any master photographer will tell you it's all about pre conceiving the image before you even get your lens cap off and then capturing the perfect moment. Instant feedback won't make another Ansel Adams any faster.

      There is a reason why I was able to get damn awesome pics of my trip to the Middle East with an ancient 2mp camera, and I was having people with 10mp Dslr's ask me how my photos were so good. Granted photography isn't all that hard, anyone who is willing to learn could master all the concepts in a month if they could do it all day.

      You're also forgetting that for sports we had antibiotics, amour food and steroids that we didn't before and most importantly corporate sponsorships and economies that we're big enough to train for a year for a sports title.

      Apples and oranges.

    10. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      With so many capable instruments in the hands of so many young minds, art is bound to happen.

      To keep our eye on the ball, we must appreciate that, in this case, the ball is not the little round thing. It's not the photographer and it's not the camera ... it's the photograph.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    11. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Giving word processors to lobotomized monkeys is not going to produce art, no matter what.

    12. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Bulldust. You are being elitist, at best.

      When I was a young lad and Moby Dick was a minnow, I studied special relativity. The math requires extracting a square root.

      I was really frustrated because doing square roots with paper and pencil is a game whose quest is coming up with the same answer three times in a row.

      When calculators with the square root function finally arrived, my learning accelerated because my goddamn objective was not to find square roots ... it was to visualize, through the math, what special relativity "looked like."

      In that sense, the technical stuff you covet is a waste of a good photographer's time.

      I learned photography on a .3Mp (not a typo ... POINT 3Mp) camera and even today, 13 years later, those old photographs tickle the eyeballs. It didn't have any knobs, so screw the technical bullshit like ISO and F-stop.

      It's all about the photograph.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    13. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, because you can correct a picture that has bad motion blur because you selected the wrong shutter timing, and put some depth of field back into a picture where you had the aperture set at max. Stupid, stupid retarded kid. Go play with your toys and stop bothering the adults.

    14. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Solandri · · Score: 4, Insightful
      As someone who learned photography "the old way" (film, darkroom, nasty chemicals), there is something to what both of you have to say. My rate of "keepers" in the film days was about 1 shot per roll (1 in 36). My rate of "keepers" in digital is about 1 in 100. So clearly I'm not being as careful to compose the shot perfectly. And I'm definitely taking multiple shots on many occasions with the hope that one will be good.

      But my rate of "keepers" per trip has skyrocketed. With film I'd be happy if I managed just 2-3 keepers from a trip. With digital I expect 5+ and am disappointed if I don't get 10. This is because I shoot a lot more pictures with digital than I ever shot with film. The cost of the professional film I used + developing meant I was paying $0.50-$1 per shot. That put a serious damper on photography. I think the most film I ever shot on a trip was 12 rolls (432 pictures) over 4 weeks, or an average of 15 shots a day. With digital I'll take 2000-3000 shots on a similar trip, or 70-110 shots a day.

      FWIW, the rate of keepers seems to be consistent (between 1 in 50 to 1 in 100) among both amateurs and professionals. i.e. The pro photographers aren't getting those great shots by snapping a few pictures. National Geographic did an article on how they make articles. The photographer shot over 5000 photos (on film!) to arrive at the 8 photos used in the article.

      Which approach is better? Hard to tell. Though truth be told, equipment actually doesn't matter. National Geographic photographers have intentionally gone on trips equipped with nothing more than an iPhone and still take stunning photos using nothing more than the default camera app.

      Equipment does matter. Photography isn't just a matter of seeing something cool and snapping a picture of it. Wide-angles can give you unusual perspectives. Better equipment gives you access to different capabilities. Telephotos allow you to compress perspective, as well as pick out distant subjects without having to run all over. A wider aperture lens can blur the backgrounds more in portraits. Flash exposure compensation can allow you to use a flash, but make the picture look like it was shot without a flash. Zooming during the exposure followed by a flash can create an impressionistic effect which emphasizes the subject. etc.

      I recently drove some European friends to San Francisco. Unfortunately we arrived right around dusk, and they weren't able to get a decent shot of themselves with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. I simply borrowed one of their DSLRs, mounted it on a tripod, put it in aperture priority mode, turned the flash on with FEC dialed to about -1.0, and told them to stand perfectly still for a few seconds. When you do that, the DSLR automatically adjusts the exposure time for the background, but exposes the foreground by modulating the flash. The result was a perfect image of the bridge and city lights in the background, with my friends perfectly exposed in the foreground.

      That was GP's point - that better equipment gives you access to more options and different things you can do to take different and better pictures. While it's certainly possible to take good photos with a smartphone, the number of different types of good photos you can take is considerably less than with a DSLR and good lenses. OP misinterpreted GP's post as a film vs digital thing.

    15. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You're being obtuse. The people taking photos like the ones your talking about would never and will never be serious photographers. They're not the ones to think about. The ones to think about are the ones that are actually taking it seriously. The reduced time interval between taking a shot, viewing the shot and taking it again if need be greatly accelerates the learning process. Assuming that you're actually evaluating the results and trying to improve.

      People who aren't trying to improve will likely never improve very much.

    16. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sounds like somebody that's not a competent photographer to me.

      If you've got easy lighting conditions, then one shot suffices, but you don't always have easy lighting conditions. And you don't always have the luxury of being able to use a handheld incident light meter either.

      What's more, people who take shots and count on fixing them are never going to get good results. I challenge you to find a photographer whose 10,000 snaps are mostly good. Even the greats like Ansel Adams has probably only a few dozen shots that he's known for out of many thousands of shots that he took. What's more a photographer that only takes one shot and knows that he's got it is never going to improve much beyond what he's doing now. And chances are the photos are rather mechanical anyways.

      But, then again, why bother knowing what you're talking about when you can spew bullshit on the internet.

    17. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by CaptainDork · · Score: 2

      Your post sorta confirms that, doesn't it?

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    18. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Actually, it is sorta point and click. These are young people. Remember that age?

      Old farts like us play by the rules.

      Young people who don't know the difference between bullshit and wild honey can do things that you and I WISH we had thought of.

      Hell. kids shoot first, and point later.

      I think it's great.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    19. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      All that experience can be accumulated hundreds of times faster in digital where you can see immediate results.

      I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that for the vast majority. Why worry about composition, aperture, exposure, and white balance when one can burn through dozens upon dozens of photos, previewing the results immediately waiting for something worthwhile to show up, and sort/crop/align later.

      You aren't disagreeing with the grandparent, you're talking about apples while he's talking oranges. And in reality, you're both correct.
       
      He's correct in that by speeding up the loop (from taking the picture to reviewing the finished product) it's possible to learn photography much faster today than in the film era. You're correct that it's possible to produce a good image by sheer luck and Photoshop.
       

      I've seen this first hand with my daughters and their friends. The shotgun approach may produce the occasional interesting photos but does not lead to refined skills required to produce stunning images.

      But here's where you go off the rails into apple territory - your daughter and her friends are not all photographers. And just because they aren't interested in actually learning photography, that doesn't preclude those that are interested from taking advantage of the faster loop to learn from doing so.

    20. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      Which is still the truth, in general. Photography on a cell phone does not equate to photography with a digital camera -- knowing what f-stop is, or shutter speed, or focal length, or a LOT of the other of the fine-grain minutiae that comes from a lot of time spent with film and digital cameras taking hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs.

      No, photography on a cell phone does not equate to photography that deals with fine grained minutiae. But, so what? Technical minutiae isn't art. It's what geeks and wannabees toss around in order to puff themselves up and make themselves feel important.

    21. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Cederic · · Score: 1

      In that sense, the technical stuff you covet is a waste of a good photographer's time.

      I learned photography on a .3Mp (not a typo ... POINT 3Mp) camera and even today, 13 years later, those old photographs tickle the eyeballs. It didn't have any knobs, so screw the technical bullshit like ISO and F-stop.

      It's all about the photograph.

      The photograph is incredibly different depending on f-stop. I can use the same exposure (shutter/fstop combination), the same framing, the same ISO, the same lighting, the same subject, the same camera, the same lens and give you two entirely visually and artistically different photographs just by changing the f-stop.

      Now tell me, if it's all about the photograph, which of those two photographs is it about? Are you going to trust to random luck or are you going to use the technical stuff that's a waste of time to consciously choose between them?

    22. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This isn't strictly true. Old school photographers learned on theory and then applied it to a situation. Instant feedback is good but I see a lot of new photographers half ass it and just shoot in auto mode ap/tv with out thinking about the image before hand

      You are falling in the same trap that people fall into when they complain about how 95% of modern music is awful compared with the music of $decade_I_was_15. They forget that 95% of music of that decade was awful, too, and they remember only the good 5%.

      For example, I have spent a few months going through my grandfather's photo albums from the 1930s and 40s trying to recognize persons and places. I have no idea who took the photos (not grandpa, he is in most of them), but from technical point of view well over 50% of them are awful: blurry or with bad compositions or both.

      That's not an isolated example and I have seen it time and time again. The old-time photos that got published were mostly taken by professionals who spent the time to master the craft, but family albums filled with hobbyist photos are full of half-assed snaps.

    23. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Godai · · Score: 1

      I'm going to have to disagree with you as well :)

      My brother started taking photography seriously when he was living in Japan for a year. Within a year he went from being general capable (I can take a picture and that's it) to being fairly expert. Enough that he considered briefly making a living doing photography. He credits a lot of that rapid growth to getting instant feedback. Yes, people just taking pictures willy nilly and & looking at the results by itself does not make for fast skill building. But I would suggest that for someone who is interested in the craft, it is impossible to not see that immediate feedback -- even if you still need to fire the picture up in a power editor to be 100% sure -- versus taking pictures in a black hole and not seeing the results for hours at a minimum is an incredibly faster iterative cycle.

      If the same people who grew up fascinated with cameras & photography thirty years ago had the digital cameras of today when they started out, there is no doubt at all that they would have become the experts they eventually became much, much, MUCH faster.

      But obviously it has to be something a person cares about and invests the time to learn. Learning about composition, aperture, exposure & white balance are all important things, but they're things you can learn about a hell of a lot faster when you can do it in the field and see theory put into practice before your very eyes.

      --
      Wood Shavings!
      - Godai
    24. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      I'll take the one I like the best.

      That's kinda like choosing between two paintings only AFTER I determine what oils the artist used.

      What does it matter?

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    25. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      There are also thousands of artists today that equal the top handful of masters of old times

      That's not how the arts work, I'm afraid.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    26. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      With so many capable instruments in the hands of so many young minds, art is bound to happen

      For certain values of "art".

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    27. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      My assertion comes from experience with crowd sourcing and what I've experienced assisting young lads and lasses in the mechanics of taking photographs with small cameras.

      By way of what reasoning do you prejudge the value of art not yet produced?

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    28. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Cederic · · Score: 1

      It matters because some fucking dork with no understanding wont take two pictures, they'll take one.

      So basically you're going on blind random fucking luck, not actually using skill and intent to take the right photograph.

      It is indeed all about the photograph. Shame that your approach means you'll often miss out on it.

    29. Re:...the best photographers were older people... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Will you stop leading with "you're being obtuse" ?
      Thank you

  8. Licensing issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Didn't they already get in trouble for essentially requiring in perpetuity licensing for uploading photos to their service?

    1. Re:Licensing issues by wiredog · · Score: 1

      Flikr has CC licensing. IIRC, you have to opt in to the Getty thing.

      --

      Best Slashdot Co
  9. the photography equivalent of tweeting by roc97007 · · Score: 3

    There's something to be said for having a camera (no matter how feeble) with you at all times, but aren't we getting tired of pictures of food and blurry portraits taken in the bathroom? People are taking this great thing (a camera with you always) and making it inane. There will inevitably be a backlash. Personally I've stopped taking photos with my phone, except in emergencies (like for accident evidence) when I don't have a "real" camera on me.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:the photography equivalent of tweeting by spire3661 · · Score: 1

      I havent stopped taking photographs, but i only share my truly exceptional ones. Most often this is done with a 'real' camera.

      --
      Good-bye
    2. Re:the photography equivalent of tweeting by Gliscameria · · Score: 1

      How is ubiquity of cameras making them inane exactly? You don't need a 'real' camera to capture a real moment. Cell cameras are great because they let you capture the stuff that you would normally forget. I can go back in my archive to cell pictures of the dumbest shit from 6 years ago and remember that moment. Even if it was just a good dinner I had, and that feels nice. Bulky cameras are great for professional jobs, but as a regular person just wanting to capture a memory they are less and less relevant.

      --
      X
    3. Re:the photography equivalent of tweeting by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      > How is ubiquity of cameras making them inane exactly?

      I don't mean to imply such a close cause and effect. I'm commenting that for whatever reason, we as a society are taking what is arguably a cool thing and turning it into something inane. It's not the ubiquity of cameras that's making them inane, it's the use to which they are put.

      For every photo or video that makes headlines or brings down a crooked cop, there are millions of banal selfies or photos of burritos. It's just exactly as depressing as the popularity of celebs who are famous only for being famous, and for much the same reason.

      I tell you, this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox -- we haven't seen any other civilizations because they all invented personal electronics, became irredeemably narcissistic, and civilization collapsed as a result.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    4. Re:the photography equivalent of tweeting by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Bulldust.

      It's like hearing you say, "Aren't we getting tired of all the inane posts on Facebook? I never post comments on the Internet unless it's to report a crime on the city police web site."

      You deal with "noise" on the Internet all the time.

      Your comment about a "real" camera makes it inherently obvious to the most casual observer that you are not a "real" photographer.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    5. Re:the photography equivalent of tweeting by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      If I'm not a "real" photographer, I sure have enough people fooled to make a decent living.

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    6. Re:the photography equivalent of tweeting by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      I don't think you are a professional photographer. Sorry, but you just don't smell right.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    7. Re:the photography equivalent of tweeting by Cederic · · Score: 1

      The issue isn't inanity - each photo posted on Facebook means something to someone.

      The challenge is curation. How do you find the great photographs.

  10. Move Over Ansel Adams... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Step aside old photography masters for the new wave. Who wants composed, national park scenery when you can hang overexposed, blurry pictures of food on your wall?

    1. Re:Move Over Ansel Adams... by k6mfw · · Score: 1

      Actually there are some Ansel Adams photogs still out there. At Mountain View, CA Art and Wine festival earlier this month, a photographer had awesome and beautiful photographs (and they weren't cheap) of various nature shots including nighttime exposures. He uses film, yes that material where you press the button on the camera and hear various mechanical noises. But no idea if it is good or not until film is developed. Then continuing on in a dark room expose these negatives on to paper which immerse into different trays (develop, stop, fix). I forgot his name but I was impressed. He does the same thing Ansel does. Hike long distances packing camera equipment, food and water. Wait for the right conditions to take the shot. Then once back at the darkroom to see how it turns out. I asked what is it like when the pic is great (as opposed to the several not-so-good), "it feels good."

      It was interesting when he explained to people his photographs are not digital and they are not photoshopped. For many film photography is very mysterious.

      --
      mfwright@batnet.com
    2. Re:Move Over Ansel Adams... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'll bet he takes digital photos to preview the shot though.

    3. Re:Move Over Ansel Adams... by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      I think it's more likely he uses his experience and imaginatiion to preview the shot.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  11. Whoosh by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    Flickr already missed the boat on being the social media image sharping app of choice.

    They are not the social media sharing app of choice.

    They ARE the primary choice for sharing images from people who are photographers, and also happen to primarily use smartphones. Yes, even over sites like 500px... Flickr has far more volume.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Whoosh by orgelspieler · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They were the primary choice for sharing photos amongst photographers back before Yahoo! bought them out. Yahoo! systematically destroyed everything that the photographers liked. At every turn they ignored the feedback of PAYING users. Some of the most talented artists dropped out and went to deviantart, or some others I can't remember the name of. These days they switch to Facebook, or just started hosting their own photos.

      Exploring new artists became challenging and tedious. It seemed like the only way to make the front page was to have some washed out HDR crap. The community has dwindled dramatically; maybe not in numbers, but the sense of actually belonging to a community of like-minded artists has certainly faded. I hardly post, and most of my contacts hardly post anymore either. I primarily use it for a place to keep family photos instead of my art photography.

    2. Re:Whoosh by youngone · · Score: 1

      Not anymore they're not, all the photographers I know, (quite a lot of amateur club photographers) are leaving Flickr in droves. The club I belong to have closed our Flickr account too.

    3. Re:Whoosh by youngone · · Score: 1

      This is my experience too, and the experience of most of the people who belong to the camera club I belong to. Flickr is finished really, the MySpace of photography.

    4. Re:Whoosh by Andrewkov · · Score: 1

      Well said. They put all their resources into screwing up the interface into an unholy mess, while never fixing obvious things like being able to follow discussion threads, which would actually help bolster a community.

  12. it would be nice if webpage is decent arrangement by k6mfw · · Score: 1

    I had many pics, still do, on Flickr along with descriptor paragraph but when they re-arranged the site with lots more scripting or whatever it may be, it became disorganized and sssssssoooooooo lllllllllooooonnnnnngggggg to view. Actually I better archive those images and descriptors before the site gets "myspaced."

    --
    mfwright@batnet.com
  13. Cell phone/tablet cameras don't count... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cell phone/tablet cameras are usually 5 megapixels or less, and use very small plastic lenses. You really can't get a decent photo with those limitations. You need a large multi-element lens made from quality glass to get (what I consider) decent photos.

    My first camera was a 35MM (not an SLR) with a seperate light meter. Camera and light meter were $5.00 at a garage sale. I already knew the basics, but learned a lot with that old camera. Better 35MM cameras followed. Todat I have a 14 megapixel camera with an 18X zoom lens. Its several years old now, there are better cameras out there for under $200.00

    Photography is a hobby for me, but I take it seriously.

  14. All that matters on the phone too by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    Photography on a cell phone does not equate to photography with a digital camera -- knowing what f-stop is, or shutter speed, or focal length, or a LOT of the other of the fine-grain minutiae

    1) the technical aspects are not really photography - they are details of a tool. They are not composition nor lighting nor mood nor concept.

    2) The iPhone with iOS8, and version of Android for a while I think let you control all of those aspects in advanced camera apps (well focal length you had to add adaptor lenses, but lots of people do use those).

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:All that matters on the phone too by David_Hart · · Score: 2

      Photography on a cell phone does not equate to photography with a digital camera -- knowing what f-stop is, or shutter speed, or focal length, or a LOT of the other of the fine-grain minutiae

      1) the technical aspects are not really photography - they are details of a tool. They are not composition nor lighting nor mood nor concept.

      2) The iPhone with iOS8, and version of Android for a while I think let you control all of those aspects in advanced camera apps (well focal length you had to add adaptor lenses, but lots of people do use those).

      Knowing the craft of f-stop, shutter speed, etc. is only a part of photography. People can take really good photos without knowing these things. The difference is that someone who is well versed in the technical aspects can take a good photo in more challenging conditions. In addition that person will also be able to be more creative and produce images using techniques that the camera computer would fail miserably at.

      In general, photography has come a long way. Digital photography has allowed people with little to no skill to take good photos. SHowever, an excellent photo still requires people with a combination of artistic eye and technical ability.

    2. Re:All that matters on the phone too by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      I disagree, somewhat.

      I teach young people how to use digital point and shoot cameras. I tell them, "See this toggle dial? Go up, down, left and right until you like what you see." (we're in Program mode)

      Some of them consistently produce art.

      If you ask them, "What F-stop and ISO settings did you use?" they will give you a blank look and direct you to the exif information inside the file to see all that historical settings data.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    3. Re: All that matters on the phone too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So your pupils don't know how to correctly set their cameras to properly capture moving subjects, they don't know how to set depth of field to blur the background, they don't know how to compensate for lighting conditions? They should have their money back and you should be fired. You're a worthless teacher. Go flip burgers, that's the job for you.

    4. Re:All that matters on the phone too by Andrewkov · · Score: 1

      As a techie, I learned the technical stuff fairly easily, it's the artistic part that's hard.

  15. Antiquated features, disloyal to paying users by dutchwhizzman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Flickr made paying users regret paying for their service, since they suddenly gave away almost all of the premium features for free. Antiquated features aren't really updated (where's the password protected gallery?) and the forum/app that they have to request features is broken since months. At this sort of pricing/service, I'll get a VPS and use that for hosting my pictures before my subscription us up for renewal again...

    --
    I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
  16. What is the guy saying here??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    FTA: "Over the next few months, the site will be unifying its design to a modern style guide, making it more visually consistent and more responsive. “Most importantly we’re also changing the technology behind that: We're going from PHP to JAVA."

    Is he talking about running Java on their servers? Or forcing the users to run Java to see the web pages?

    The current Flickr site uses JavaScript to show the page, and their YUI library is buggy and abandoned (as of their August 2014 announcement).

    They really need to fix the client-side JavaScript pronto, it's horrible!

    The whole site is going downhill, most pics are just copies uploaded by IFTTT from other places. It's a dumping ground that people don't look at.

    1. Re:What is the guy saying here??? by Bazman · · Score: 1

      It'll be Java on the server to replace the PHP on the server. Nobody writes Java applets any more. If they do it will be the end - do Java applets even run on phones? I've not seen one (by which I mean a "You need a Java Applet Plugin" placeholder) for years.

      I just take issue at the "Most Importantly". How is that most important? Because the end-user shouldn't care. The only people to whom its most important are the Java devs getting the gig. I suspect the PHP devs getting their final wages might be a bit upset. But then again, maybe Y! don't bother maintaining the code and retaining any PHP expertise.

  17. Weasel worded. by westlake · · Score: 2

    There are also thousands of artists today that equal the top handful of masters of old times, it simply isn't acknowledge because it is subjective, and appreciation is inherently relative

    1 Make a bold, dramatic assertion.

    2 and. in your next breath, argue that is useless to offer any proof.

    Such a talent is wasted in tech, You really ought to go into politics.

    1. Re:Weasel worded. by timeOday · · Score: 1

      Go ahead and try to argue why it's not true, I'll wait. In every area where achievement is objectively measurable, it is true. For example, The world record marathon time was 2:26 in 1950, but the top 50 finishers of the most recent Boston Marathon all beat that time. So, what you need to prove is that something about modern times has had such an opposite effect -- in subjective pursuits only -- as to outweigh the nearly insurmountable odds of a growing population with growing freedom times the impact of technology.

  18. Thanks to flickr by CarmeloCerrelli1 · · Score: 1

    Flickr has made a platform for new photographers which is great i think we should all give respect

  19. Given that they told pro photogs to F off by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Flickr used to have quite a lock on the pro photographers market. It was a simple easy to use service that allowed not particularly technical people to manage and browse libraries easily.

    Moreover they were first. So its no surprise that wedding and HS senior photo people camped there and never left. A year ago they got rid of the pro accounts and made every page a tiled 100 page image -- by default and you couldn't ever change that default view. The exodus was what Yahoo wanted and got. They want and eyeball driven ad-revenue photo site and not one where pro photographers are uploading 24 megabyte proof images for only $25 a year.

  20. Sorry-average photo is worse than the past by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unfortunately, just because the technology is there means there are so many people that think they are great photographers. Do you know how many people show me their pic of a sunset and then claim they are great at photography. Sorry, no. Not even close. Haven't you noticed that in the average magazine today, the photos are truly terrible. Why, because having a camera does not mean you understand how to take a good photo. Composition, color, light, angles, etc. But because the average picture is so bad, what is "good" today is really not that good at all. People are always amazed at my pics, and they are also not great, just better than average because I put some thought into them. Sad. Good photographers are as rare as ever.

  21. WTH by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Adding a filter doesn't make you a photographer anymore than adding a rocket to a runner.

  22. Beloved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Beloved???

  23. Revisionist history by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1
    So a smartphone is somehow less expensive than a 110 camera?

    And like it or not, they are complete utter shit compared to real equipment.

    And while a good photographer can make decent photos with a smartphone if they work within their limitations, "Photographers" is a very generous term for what most people are capable of doing.

    --
    The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
  24. papers please... by Ragica · · Score: 1

    So that's why you can't even sign up for an account without surrendering your mobile number and complying with SMS activation... they're after the cell phone photographer generation now, who are used to this sort of bending over for service....

    1. Re:papers please... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've got a dodgy old PAYG phone that I use when an account requires your mobile number and SMS activation. I don't use it for anything else so datamining will be a bit tricky.....

    2. Re:papers please... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So that's why you can't even sign up for an account without surrendering your mobile number and complying with SMS activation... they're after the cell phone photographer generation now, who are used to this sort of bending over for service....

      All major email providers want your cellphone when you're signing up. They claim it is for recovery purposes, but we know better. I just hate that the old tried and true tricks like alternative email + security questions are STILL mandatory (in one way or another) AND they still want the cellphone. It used to be that my anger was from them wanting a birthdate, sex and zip code back in the nineties, where the name was optional. Now they can have all of these without even asking because of snooping and location services. Geocoding browser APIs were never welcome in my house. Now your phone does for them.

  25. Mods: OP is DOA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because it comes out of the false film/digital dichtomy shit.

    Make pictures, not enemies.

  26. photographer by p51d007 · · Score: 0

    smartphones & photographer don't belong in the same sentence. smartphones & SNAPSHOTS might work in the same sentence, but not photographer. "Selfies" are not the art form, like photographs are.

  27. Have You Used The Flickr App? by opusbuddy · · Score: 1

    It pretty much stinks. I always say that the best camera is the one in your hands, and most of the time that's my iPhone 5s, not my Nikon D810. But the 5s is pretty lousy for any kind of post processing, so I AirDrop images to my iPad Air.

    But after all this time, and woo hoo over new versions of the Flickr app, it's still not really an iPad app-it's still an iPhone app on a iPad (oh, yeah, it's got a crappy digital zoom 2X mode, right). Oh, you CAN upload via the IOS photos app, but even that's kinda lame. And it forgets all the metadata (like copyright) that you stored in the files you import from the "big iron."

    It's nice, but very much Yahoo!

    --
    If this were easy, they wouldn't need us to do it!
  28. flickr is obsolete by Jacek+Poplawski · · Score: 1

    I used flickr years ago, then I switched to 500px. Yesterday I wanted to check out how flickr looks now, I did basic test - display best photos. On 500px you can just click "popular" and you can browse amazing photography. How to do it on flickr? After few minutes I resigned, because all I saw was just crap.

  29. Best photogs of 20 yrs ago were 'older' because .. by fygment · · Score: 1

    ... it takes time to become a good photographer .... or painter, or sculptor, or any other artist.
    It's called 'skill', and it takes time to refine to the point that others recognise it.
    Some people have 'talent' and blossom quickly, but that is rare now, just as it was then.

    Also the point is completely incorrect; getting in to photography isn't easier today! A decent camera was available for $200 way back 20 years ago. And young folks who were interested in photography, paid the price. Just as young folks today spring $200 or more for their phone.

    The actual difference between photography now and 20 years ago? The camera (in the phone) is waaayyyy more portable. And that's kind of it. In terms of quality: film resolution beats cell phone (and all but the most expensive cameras) hands down, lense quality of an old SLR beats cellphone camera by orders of magnitude.

    --
    "Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.