Starting with Flickr: The First Steps

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Flickr (pronounced Flicker) is a site that lets you store and share photos. Think of Flickr like your digital shoebox for photos, but way more organized and way-less dusty. Instead of stuffing printed pictures into an old cardboard box under your bed, Flickr lets you store, sort, and share your photos online—without the risk of them fading away or getting lost during a spring-cleaning frenzy.

Now, imagine you’ve got a magic album that automatically backs up your photos, lets you tag them for easy discovery, and even gives you the power to share them however you like—publicly for the world to admire, privately for your eyes only, or selectively for friends and family. That’s Flickr in a nutshell.

Since we’ve been using Flickr since 2005, we will share a few tricks along the way. So, if you’re just starting out, stick around—we’ll help you navigate the ins and outs of this photo-sharing wonderland. Let’s get flicking!

Having said so, don’t worry if you are new. After so many years, there’s so much that we still need to discover about Flickr! If you have a favorite tip, please mention it in the Comments section so that together, we can help others to get more from their Flickr accounts.

Flickr does so much; let us look briefly at what you can expect if you are new or are just starting with Flickr, as shown in Figure 1, below.

Screenshot from Flickr Site
Figure 1: The Flickr site

Flickr Can Do This

In simple terms, you can:

Upload your photos.
Tag these photos to make them more discoverable.
Arrange and group photos in sets and collections, making them easy to locate when you have many photos.
Organize photos, so that you can make changes to the meta-data.
Share photos with permission levels.

Flickr Can Also Do This

Of course, you can do more. There are some tasks you can achieve without even being aware:

Your photos are all backed up.
Your photos are available for others to see, and they can contact you.
You may end up making money by just uploading photos on Flickr. There have been many stories of visual agencies approaching Flickr members and paying them to use their photos.
Your photos will receive comments, and many people will mark them as favorites.
Your photos may be placed into Flickr groups.

Sharing Options on Flickr

We will cover a lot more in this tutorial series on Flickr, but for now, let us explore several ways to share your uploaded photos:

Public: You can choose to share them with everyone–Flickr calls this sort of sharing Public.
Friends or Family: You can create two distinct sharing options called Friends and Family. In this case, anyone who is on your Friends list, or Family list can view the photos.
Friends and Family: Flickr also allows you to provide both Friends and Family sharing options–these contacts can view photos from either distinction.
Private: Finally, if you don’t want to share the photos with anyone but yourself–in that case you designate such photos as Private.

Whichever way you share your photos, the best thing about Flickr is that you no longer have to worry about web hosting, creating photo thumbnails, or sending huge email attachments containing your photos!

More About Starting with Flickr

Think of Flickr like a trendy coffee shop where people come to showcase their best photo brews. It started as a cozy little spot, but word spread fast—like free Wi-Fi at an airport—and soon, everyone wanted in.

Before long, Yahoo! swooped in like a collector spotting a rare vintage camera, eagerly acquiring Flickr and adding it to their collection. Why? Because Flickr wasn’t just another website; it was quickly becoming the go-to gallery for shutterbugs around the world.

Fun fact: How many photos?

At its peak, Flickr housed billions of photos—enough to keep you scrolling until your fingers begged for a break!

We really like Flickr–it’s easy to use and has so many features that you’ll need some time to explore them all. At last count, Flickr had over 87 million members and that number must have been old news by now!

Having said that, we found no good Flickr-related site that explains everything that a beginner or even a seasoned user wants to know about starting with Flickr. That’s because Flickr is so easy to use–but Flickr has so many features that you’ll never know about if you don’t go exploring!

Luckily, we’ve been doing so much Flickr exploring these days. In the coming blog posts, we are going to discuss a lot of Flickr related stuff, beginning with getting started with Flickr. We will also look at other photo-hosting sites, free photo resources, stock imagery, etc.

Figure 2: A screenshot from the Flickr site (year 2006)

If you click the above screenshot, it will take you straight to my photo collection of over 12,000 (as of the time of writing) public photos hosted on Flickr. Remember the above link will open a new browser window or tab and if your popup blocker doesn’t allow you to open a new window, just right-click the image and choose one of the Open options–these options are a little different depending on which browser you use.

Feel free to sign into Flickr–if you already have a Yahoo! mail ID, you can use that to sign into Flickr. In fact, here is a tutorial on signing into Flickr for the first time.

Flickr is a great timewaster as well–just search for a picture on any topic and you might be surprised by the visual content that is shown. It’s almost like a photo dictionary put up by users all over the world! We found over 300 pictures when I searched for the keyword “gobbledygook!” Flickr also has a page with the most popular keywords people are searching.

Flickr Gobbledygook
Figure 3: Flickr search for Gobbledygook

Many people won’t call that a waste of time! Think of Flickr like a giant online photo album where anyone can peek inside—no invitation required! It’s like walking into a photography exhibit where all the pictures are free to admire. You don’t need a membership to enjoy the show, but if you do sign up, you get access to the VIP lounge with extra perks.

Flickr offers two membership tiers: Free and Pro. The Free version is like a public park—open to everyone, no ticket necessary. The Pro version, on the other hand, is like an exclusive backstage pass, giving you extra storage, advanced sharing options, and a few bells and whistles to make your photo experience even snazzier.

Fun fact: Flickr Trivia

At its peak, Flickr housed billions of photos—enough to scroll endlessly until your fingers beg for mercy!

Stay tuned, because in upcoming posts, we’ll dive into the nitty-gritty of these memberships and reveal how you can make the most of this digital gallery. Ready to flick through some more details? Let’s go!

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