Comments on: How Do You Use Flickr?

By: Andy Gibb

Andy Gibb — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:19:40 +0000

I think I’ve found a neat and unobtrusive way to include licence and attribution for an image where I want to use its title for my own purposes. CC can produce a small widget for the exact licence of a photo if you follow the licence link and scroll to the foot of the page.
It’s easy then to append this to the image followed by the photographer’s name, which links to the source material. It’s easier to see in action, so scroll down one page on my blog to find the Science Fiction picture. Feel free to copy the HTML from this if you want to use it.

By: Heather

Heather — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:45:38 +0000

I have a Flickr account, but rarely use it. The reason I created it was so I could add bird photos to the photo pool that the Cornell Lab created when they were trying to get more photos for the updated All About Birds site (and I’m happy to note that some of my photos were used!). I am aware of it’s capacity as a pseudo-blog and as yet another social networking platform, but I, like Kirk, use Picasaweb to bring my photos to my blog. I use Picasa’s software (not to be confused w/Picasaweb)almost exclusively on my computer to view and alter/enhance my photos, then I choose what I will post on my blog and upload them to Picasaweb. From there, I plug html code into my posts for the individual pictures (several preset image resizes are available through Picasaweb). This is how I’ve done it for as long as I’ve blogged, and I would hate to think of changing course. The only downside to using Picasa, though, is that it may not work so well with other blog platforms (wordpress, for example). In theory, it should work, especially since I’m just posting the photos using code that references back to my Picasa web album, but since I only use the Blogger platform, I don’t know how compatible it is with other platforms. One thing is for sure: Picasaweb does not have the 200-image limit. I’ve posted many 100s of photos to Picasa web albums, and I’ve still got about 45% capacity left before I have to pay for more (you get 1024MB of storage for free with Picasaweb!). I think there is a community aspect to Picasa, too, but I haven’t really explored it.

By: Andy Gibb

Andy Gibb — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 11:04:26 +0000

My CC licence, which is site-wide, is share-alike. That’s what I thought would cover my use of other SA material. I also, just as belt-and-braces, stick a copyright into the title of any image. If nothing else it fixes the name of the photographer in my mind.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:01:00 +0000

@andy Gibb Actually, come to think of it, where the SA licences are concerned, you can technically only use the material if the resultant work is covered under the same licence, so to be fully compliant you’d probably want to add a notice at the end of the blog post stipulating that the post is licenced Attribution-Share Alike or whatever. However, I think that part of it is really only important if you alter the image in some significant way, say by cropping it or turning it black-and-white. The originator wants you to have the freedom to do that, but also wants to make sure that others know they have the freedom to do the same with your derivative work — that’s what “share alike” is all about.

By: Dave

Dave — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 13:55:29 +0000

@Andy Gibb For the “Share Alike” licences, inclusion of the licence is mandatory — it’s part of the terms of use. For the others, it’s probably not as critical. A link back does of course allow people to see how it was licenced, but since a lot of people lump all CC licences together, I think it helps to at least give the shorthand form, e.g. “Creative Commons BY-NC-ND licence.”

By: Andy Gibb

Andy Gibb — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 08:53:13 +0000

@Dave I’ve often wondered about including the attribution and the exact licence for Creative Commons. I always link back and include a copyright in the title but as for reproducing the licence… I rather hope my own CC licence at the foot of every page covers it. Would that be right?

By: The Natural Capital

The Natural Capital — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 04:40:12 +0000

When I’m doing a blog post and don’t have good pictures for it, I fill in with pictures that have a Creative Commons license that have been posted to Flickr (using their advanced search feature).

I put pictures I have taken on Flickr
1) to use up less memory with my host,
2) to give back to the Creative Commons, and
3) to participate in opportunities like the Sierra Club’s Daily Ray of Hope, which selects a picture from Flickr every day to be emailed (along with an uplifting or nature-oriented quote) to their mailing list.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 20:56:24 +0000

Jennifer makes a great point about Flickr as a place to find other people’s Creative Commons-licensed photos to use for illustrations; we use this extensively on my mother’s website, especially since I discovered the extent to which image searches attract visitors. In advanced search mode, simply limit the search to CC-licenced images. One has to be sure not only to link back to the original, but to include the attribution and the exact license in a caption or footnote.

By: Jennifer W. Hanson

Jennifer W. Hanson — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:37:18 +0000

Interesting question and comments. I’m a total Flickr addict, but my blogging and Flickring sides are parallel online personalities that sometimes intersect. My blog is focused on birds and history; text-heavy with images as secondary elements, if at all. I also have no illusions of bird photography beyond casual hand-held digiscoping. On the other hand, I’ve found Flickr to be the social networking site that best fits my temperament and interests (plus some good friends of mine are on it). Many of my Flickr photos are of moths (which occasionally stray onto my blog) and historical sites; birds are secondary at best. In a way, Flickr is my moth blog.

Once in a while I have a Flickr photo that can be used for a blog post, but I often end up taking a photo for a blog post (say of some field sketches) and uploading it right to Blogger, since I don’t post photos of my field sketches on Flickr. My bird blog is a very specific manifestation of my interests that I try to keep on topic, while my Flickr presence is a more accurate reflection of my wider range of interests (at least, the ones that lend themselves to photography). I’ve also found other people that share some of those interests on Flickr, so it does have a social dimension as well. I have ongoing Flickr comment conversations with some people I’ve never met in “real life.”

Flickr can be a good source of other peoples’ photos to use on one’s blog (check the copyright statements carefully, of course!), but I haven’t done a lot of that so far. I’ve found Flickr’s “post to your blog” functionality very easy to use, but it is bare-bones and I have to subsequently add tags to the post in Blogger.

I don’t watch my blog stats all that much, but my blog definitely drives a few visitors to my Flickr stream, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it works in reverse.

I could go on and on, but hopefully this addresses some of the original questions.

By: John

John — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 18:27:43 +0000

Someone mentioned Picasaweb further up in the thread. Yes, Picasaweb is integrated with Blogger, but not nearly as much as it could be. For example, when adding an image to a post, there is no option to import directly from your Picasaweb account. Inserting one by a web URL can give unpredictable results. Integration seems limited to storage space. Picasaweb pales in comparison to Flickr’s community and metadata advantages.