Photoblog, Bandwidth & Beer
If you happen over to my photoblog Take a Walk in my Shoes you might quickly realise there is only a single image, rather than archives with a monthly favourite. If you’ve been enjoying the format with large high quality images in archives, I can only apologise. Unfortunately the main issue is that I initially blew my hosting account bandwidth, so I doubled it, and I’ve pretty much used half of that again. So my 2000MB account bandwidth limit, which usually only consumes a fraction of that, seemed to blow out to about 2600MB this month. Last month it was a mere 300MB, up from about 130MB the month before. At the increase over last month’s statistics I’d say it’s a case of fix the leak now before January cuts me off at the financial bandwidth consuming knees.
A secondary reason is that Creative Commons licensing with a requirement for attribution and a non-commercial limitation is just that. The saying is free as in free to use non-commercially, not free as in beer. So I’m reticent to leave archives of particularly high quality images online for Google Images or other automated systems to dish out to all and sundry as free stock photography. No, it isn’t free. Not as in free beer. And if anyone has that impression then I apologise again. Sharing these images with people online, and saying that I don’t mind if you show people or stick them on your own tshirt or mash them up for fun, does not mean I forfeit copyright or moral rights on the images. It’s about sharing, not exploiting.
However, the large image size and clean format of Take a Walk in my Shoes proves to me that Flickr isn’t the option if you want to produce and present high quality photography (stock, commercial, art, whatever) into the online marketplace. I’m not known for my photography although I’ve been getting more heavily involved in it over the last year – more heavily than web development, for sure. But people like to see interesting and beautiful photography with low cognitive effort on their end. I know this because that’s how I like to view photography, and the statistics here confirm it. This is a potentially popular and fast growing photoblog.
The take away from that is what I’ve referred to for quite some time as Flickr Syndrome. If you want to be in the crowd, if you want to be invisible, if you want to present your work in the same format as everyone else Flickr is fantastic. Got a hundred photos to dump – go to Flickr. If your holiday was fun or your family likes to share – go to Flickr. But if you want to market your photography, no matter how good or bad, as something different then Flickr is not the marketing tool that is going to work for most people. Yes it has a community and word of mouth. No it doesn’t provide you the individual presence to be a lighthouse unless you want to invest most of yourself in building that inner community awareness.
OK let me put it this way – how many Flickr photos have you looked at? Personally I got sick of the format in about 5 minutes. Compare that to the effective marketing that is provided by a business name, a dedicated professional domain name, a branding strategy, effective targeting of identified market segments. Please don’t try to tell me that Flickr will provide you with those tools. For professional photography I’d consider a Flickr account just a little better than a GeoCities website account.
But don’t get me wrong, Flickr is a great application for what it does best. It just won’t ever work to market yourself as the same as everyone else.
So, mainly due to my inability to support bandwidth for archives, Take a Walk in my Shoes has become a single photograph window. No that wouldn’t have been an issue on Flickr (go figure)… but remember the marketing angle? I’m not entirely sure how I’ll set any ecommerce mechanism up, or even if it will eventually pay for itself, but obviously some shots are worth putting forward commercially. As larger sizes in frames, or without frames, delivered to wherever a courier will take them. I’m also interested in art photography, and that’s another angle I’ll explore over the next year.
I’m interested in applying for an artist residency on King Island for 2010 to explore my grandfather’s cameras and glass negatives in the King Island Museum. Kittles Tronerud took the photograph of King Island’s first car, for example, and other culturally significant events.
But today I’m going to pick up my brand new nifty fifty – that’s a 50mm 1.8 prime lens. I’d like to explore bokeh. Had my eye on it for a while… can’t stop and talk.
Update: 31 December, 2008
The problem with living in the quiet little capital city of Tasmania is the ludicrous situation where not one single 50mm 1.8 is left on the shelf. The last one sold in the last few days… and they’re waiting for a new order from Nikon. So that’s a bummer. Today is the day the last of the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race contestants crawl into port, too. Ah well… if there’s one thing I’ve learned to do well in life it’s wait. And wait. It’s kind of funny though because I looked and sweated and really considered that lens – in the meantime they sold out. Kind of funny that.
December 31st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Oooh, I bought that same lens about a couple of months ago and it’s been fantastic! I’ve had lots of fun with it.
December 31st, 2008 at 3:44 pm
I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks Roberto, but I’m really looking forward to it.
December 31st, 2008 at 4:22 pm
Doh! Sorry to hear that Steven. But all good things are worth the wait!
As about Flickr. I honestly didn’t think too much about it before, since I mostly used facebook, or google to store photos and to share with friends and family.
I only got more heavily involved with Flickr(eventually got the Pro) account after I got the D90. I’m sure everyone uses it for different reasons. For me, for now, it’s about learning. I find the Nikon groups are very friendly and helpful. It’s just a lot easier to post a pic from Flickr and have people critique it.
Flickr, like all social media sites, is basically what you make of it IMHO. Took me forever to “get” Twitter. But there’s the issue about creative common as you mentioned. I agree as long as you put your work out there, people will rip it. Then again, if you publish any photo on your own site(even one at a time), your photos may have the same fate too.
Over all, I’m very pleased with Flickr. I’m more drawn to its community than the application side.
December 31st, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Hi Jin, yes I agree Flickr is a great application for what it’s meant to achieve – sharing, for example. Social networking. But when it comes to someone, say an artist or if you’re actually selling the work, then Flickr is not an effective marketing tool simply because it’s generic. And we see how many Flickr photos in our travels? I believe there are currently just over 6 billion flickr photos.
My point then was simply that given a non-Flickr environment even average high quality large images sell themselves.
It’s the same argument that if you were a web designer and had a Geocities account then it’s not the best of starts… kind of…
So, professionally speaking, because nowdays we are what we sell in a real sense, if one were to be selling photography – all things being equal – then Flickr is not the format to be displaying them to the world IMO. From a marketing perspective. Sitting in the same generic design as 6 billion other photos has to be detrimental to your brand.
However, you can social network very effectively and achieve those goals. I’d probably suggest that a unique brand / site plus a social networking strategy would be a good way to go.
I’m in post shock of not being able to buy a lense I was only looking at a couple of days ago on the shelf. Ha. That’s the way of the quiet parts of the world.
December 31st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
And the issue is in 2 parts with the Creative Commons. While I accept a fair normal amount of use – even not fair use – it’s just correct for people to understand Creative Commons isn’t free as in beer. Regardless of whether or not they do pick the images up…
Having only 1 image achieves two objectives. It stops my having to pay for excessive bandwidth. Second, it creates an effort for collecting a set. Someone has to come back to grab the next one, as opposed to just grabbing them in a set. Which takes effort. Which most people would tire of quickly. While that definately sounds a little paranoid, I confess, I’ve been burned in the past. So it’s not unreasonable to respect the Creative Commons that a person chooses, really. Yes I’ll get ripped, one image at a time potentially. But at the same time I’m agreeing to share quite widely within certain boundaries.
As it stands though, I can’t afford to maintain the bandwidth. And I had to take the full images out of the RSS feed too.
January 1st, 2009 at 3:17 am
Steven, I understand. Maybe another solution to help you with the bandwidth is, store your photos on Flickr. Only make the current photo public. Once the post expires, move it to your private sets. This way, all the photo related bandwidth will be on Flickr’s end.
As for Pros using sites like Flickr. What I’ve seen over the years, even before Flickr is that some Pros put a very small but brand defining collection on photos.net or deviantart, as a way of advertising. Then people who admire their works would go to their mainsite. I think it may be a good way of marketing.
January 1st, 2009 at 8:35 am
Mmm yes I should be looking at storage options on Flickr, for sure. I’ve seen other people store their images there and display them on their site – although I’ll have to get the energy to scour their TOS. I recall something being in there last year I wasn’t impressed with…
I’m a little jaded by freelancing for companies that just kept saying “grab it off Flickr, it’s free” and not understanding different levels of CC in the working environment. So it’s made me a little cautious. Still, it’s something I have to investigate Jin, for sure.