FLICKER OF RECOGNITION

Dick Pountain/ Idealog286/ 9th May 2018 14:38:14

Their casual dropping of the “e” was a bravado touch (and I don’t imagine it had anything to do with Oulipo) but when I joined in 2006 I still found Flickr rather an odd name, simply because for we Brits a “flick” is a motion picture rather than a still. OK, Flickr did later admit video content, but it remains overwhelmingly a platform for still photography. And it’s not half so odd a name as SmugMug.

SmugMug is the US firm which back in April bought Flickr from its previous owner Yahoo, and recently emailed me, first to assure me that my Flickr account would remain unchanged for the forseeable future, then to invite me to try its own offering (which to my surprise was founded in 2002, two years before Flickr).

Regular readers may recall that I’m a dedicated Flickr user, with 1856 photos and other graphics displayed there. I’d have to confess though that my dedication has been, er, flickering somewhat over the last year or two, because getting pictures seen on Flickr feels increasing like a chore. The reason is simply the site’s success: it currently holds well over 10 billion pictures, and has 75 million users who upload as many as 25 million more pictures per day. Put another way, there are more Flickr users than the UK population, so getting a picture seen is much like stepping out into the street and waving it above your head.

Flickr’s organising principle is the photostream: your pictures get displayed in strict chronological order, so only the most recent, head of the stream, gets broadcast to your followers. Each picture becomes progressively less visible as time passes. Flickr’s Groups are the way around this. There are over ten million of these, created by users on specific themes: I’m in 221 of them, from birds, flowers and water to surrealism, abstract art and the disturbing. Putting a picture into groups gets it far more views than merely leaving it on your photostream for people to find. Unfortunately, due to that torrent of fresh content, many groups impose restrictions - for example only one or two pictures per day - and many also demand that you comment on some number of other people’s pictures for each of yours posted (to discourage spamming and careless use).

I like to make picture sequences that need to be seen together, but to get enough attention on Flickr I need to post them into at least 20 groups, most of which will only permit one or two a day, and require up to three comments. Hence it can take several days to post them all, and half-an-hour each day to add the comments (even using short-cut macros).

It’s becoming a chore, so I often put a sequence into a Facebook album instead, with just one on Flickr. However Facebook is an awkward platform for pictures, so I decided to check out SmugMug’s 14-day free trial.

SmugMug is all about selling your pictures, which I wouldn’t mind doing (and which Flickr has never achieved). Instead of a photostream you get a customisable website that looks highly professional, with its own URL for potential customers (Flickr has a slightly unfriendly face for non-members). However you pay for these services, a monthly fee that rises with the promotional features you require, and 15% of any sale goes to SmugMug.

The Basic plan at $4 is twice what I now pay on Flickr, while the Power ($6), Portfolio ($16) and Business ($30) plans would need to sell a lot of pix for me to break even.

It was viewing the sample sites that made up my mind. Most showed portraits, family pictures or postcard scenes, like those high-street photography shops you still see in many small towns. I realised that I’m not actually a photographer at all, just someone who employs a digital camera and computer software to make images. I don’t aim at the perfection of professional photographers, I don’t enter competitions, and I don’t share the dominant aesthetic on Flickr which is for over-saturated, over-sharpened photos that hit you in the eye.

My favourite among the famous photographers is Saul Leiter, who worked for Vogue but for his own pleasure preferred the out-of-focus, the eccentrically framed, the sudden splash of highly emotional colour. I heavily process my pictures to make them look more like paintings, I fiddle with fractal images in Sumo Paint for hours until something catches my eye, usually through colour as much as form. What pleases me is unlikely to be what would sell. Posting to Flickr is a chore, but then so is stretching a canvas. It’s art, innit.

[Dick Pountain would be delighted if you viewed his creations at https://www.flickr.com/photos/dick_pountain/ and it won’t cost you a penny]