A one page guide explaining what Flickr is to people who are completely new to it.

1. What is flickr?
Flickr is a photo sharing site. That means you website - though it’s always polite to ask
upload photos to it, so that other people can people first.
look at them. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?
Some Flickr groups are incredibly creative,
with people spending a lot of time setting up
and taking their shots. Some nice informal
examples of these include ‘Stormtroopers:
Their Secret Lives and Adventures’ and ‘Lego
vignettes’.
Sometimes Flickr groups organise meetups -
You have to open an account first, but once often called ‘Flickr walks’ - where everyone
you have done that you can get cracking gets together and goes for a tramp around with
uploading your photos. Once you have them their cameras. These walks are well worth
on the site, you can give them titles, attending, not least because they often end in
descriptions and add keywords, known as the pub.
‘tags’.
Editing
Tags are pretty important, because once you
have used a few on your own photos, you can Other cool things Flickr lets you do includes
click them to find photos that other people editing the photos that you have uploaded,
have used those tags to describe. It’s a great whilst still online. Just click on one of your
way of discovering new pictures of the things photos, then under the ‘Actions’ menu, choose
you are interested in! ‘Edit photo in Piknik’. This lets you make a
wide range of edits, without the need of
Comments software on your computer.
Photos can also be commented on, so people Flickr is important because photographs are
can drop by and leave remarks about the among the most engaging social objects on
excellence of your photography, or perhaps the web. People love to look at them, and they
their memories and experiences of whatever it like contributing them too!
is that is in your photograph.
Like most social sites, you can connect with
friends and family on the site, and can make
certain photos only available to one or both of
those groups, as well as publishing them
publicly. This gives you the chance to ensure
some privacy.
What’s more, Flickr lets you join groups, based
on local areas or along topic lines, so you can
share relevant photos with others, and chat to
them in the discussion forums. These groups
can be a great source of photos for your
This quick guide was put together by Kind of Digital.
We provide strategic advice, training and technical development to help organisations open up and
make the most of the web - including social media tools like Flickr!
Find out more at kindofdigital.com or follow us on Twitter - @kindofdigital
Published under creative commons - feel free to redistribute and edit, but not for commercial gain.