Swim Carnival (Hawkesdale College P12, 2007) (c)

Flickr is one of my favorite websites on the net. It has taken my personal interests in vintage camera, digital and film photography and pushed it to new levels that I didnt even dream existed. But it is more than a mere photo album online.

Drawings, computer illustrations, video, animations, photographs and other types of media can be uploaded. It can ‘processes’ your images into several sizes that can be copied and pasted into any blog or internet forum via HTML code. You can add friends and contacts to your list, which allows you to view(via thumbnail links) five of their new uploads at a time. It also allows you to comment on their images (or anyones images for that matter) that you wish. You can join groups that allow you to ‘post’ your images into their ‘pools’ so that they are visible to an even wider audience.The groups have discussion forum pages that cover questions and answers as well as heaps of useful information regarding how to take a better image, how to use photoshop, debates about ‘issues’ affecting the group, how to repair your camera, and occasionally little competitions and ‘events’ to extend your artistic ability with the camera.

So where do we start?

I am assuming that anyone reading this has already signed up. Please resize your photos to 691 x 518 pixels in your image software. Its a good decent size and uploads quickly. To upload a photo after you have signed in, the first page you should see is your homepage on Fickr:

Go to the link I have underlined in red and click. It will then load this page:

I have a bad internet connection at home so I will show you the basic uploader, otherwise follow the link: Choose photos and videos and follow the links. It is that easy.

If your net connection is slow click : PSSST – looking for our basic uploader at the very bottom of the page. Click and it will take you here:

Click: Browse next to the first box. and find the image you want to upload. I keep a folder on my desktop specifically for Flickr uploads. After resizing I save them to the folder and find that it keeps them conveniently in the one place and easy to find. It is at this page you can set your privacy settings, and add tags. It is also possible to do this later so I tend to skip this option and go straight to the upload button. You should see this page.

When it is finished uploading you will see a page that prompts you again to give the image tags and titles (Batch organising) again I would skip this step as you can change it in the photos own page. From here if you click: You on the toolbar it will take you to your album where the image has been uploaded. Now the next installment of this blog will go into how to title, and tag your images, also how to add a description and how to find and add it to a group pool.