Flickr pitfalls?

Mark2703

Mark2703

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Mark
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Hi,

I have just set up a flickr account, not that I will ever produce anything fantastic, but you never know, how does one go about protecting your images?

Also any tips for organising images on the account? What size to upload? Any pitfalls a new user should be aware of Do's and Don'ts sort of thing.

Probably an FAQ somewhere but I have been searching for so many things the forum can be very overwhelming with information overload.
 
If you mean protect your images from being stolen from the web, you can't. You could watermark them, but that is not 100% insurance. If you don't want them nicked, don't publish them on the web.
 
Don't worry about it. Seriously, people get way to het up over these things.
 
Basic rules.. don't upload anything larger than you need to. If you're hosting for general posting on a forum 250-320 pixels on the long-side is fine, very rarely does anyone need anything bigger than 600 pixels on the long-side for Flickr.

People will take images they like from wherever they find them. There is no secure way of posting images online. If someone can see it, they can download it.

Organising your account is a personal thing. I generally file everything into Sets by equipment used (camera, lens, film, etc) but I've never really found a satisfactory system for Place/Event. Instead I prefer to make sure I use sensible tags so I can search my own stream effectively.
 
Yellowbelly said:
If you mean protect your images from being stolen from the web, you can't. You could watermark them, but that is not 100% insurance. If you don't want them nicked, don't publish them on the web.
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Sage advice, thanks.

The23rdman said:
Don't worry about it. Seriously, people get way to het up over these things.
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Yep, but a certain amount of healthy paranoia with the net is good ;)

Alastair said:
Basic rules.. don't upload anything larger than you need to. If you're hosting for general posting on a forum 250-320 pixels on the long-side is fine, very rarely does anyone need anything bigger than 600 pixels on the long-side for Flickr.

People will take images they like from wherever they find them. There is no secure way of posting images online. If someone can see it, they can download it.

Organising your account is a personal thing. I generally file everything into Sets by equipment used (camera, lens, film, etc) but I've never really found a satisfactory system for Place/Event. Instead I prefer to make sure I use sensible tags so I can search my own stream effectively.
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Thanks Alastair, I usually post 1024 on the long side on other forums I visit/run tbh, but that is food for thought.
 
Mark2703 said:
Sage advice, thanks.

Yep, but a certain amount of healthy paranoia with the net is good ;)

Thanks Alastair, I usually post 1024 on the long side on other forums I visit/run tbh, but that is food for thought.
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I disagree. There's no such thing as healthy paranoia. ;)
 
Thing is what are the images of, are they something unique that are likely to be stolen?
For example I've made the mistake in the past of going over the top worrying about this, and ruined plenty of shots (which might not of been that good anyway) with silly water marks when in reality no one was going to steal them.
If you shot landscape there are millions of amazing landscape shots all over the internet, unless yours are better than all the ones out there now i wouldn't worry

I've had stuff stolen that had some kind of historical interest, such a old railway stuff and some old buildings around Liverpool, it bugged me for a while until i accepted the fact you cant do anything about it

Just don't put them on flickr at such a good res that people can print them but they still look ok on line
 
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I am not overly concerned about images being stolen, I was really wondering if it was possible to protect it in some way I had not found out about, in fact if anyone used one of my images I would not only be surprised but flattered too :D

I guess the bottom line is, as with any web based thing, be sensible and only put up stuff you don't mind being abused or being seen by the world.

Thanks for all the comments, at least now I am aware and can make an informed decision about how I use the account.
 
As above - there's no way to prevent an image from being swiped, although it's easy enough to slightly irritate people, either with "right click" disabling, or Flash-heavy sites. =:)

I tend toward slightly larger sizes, usually around 1280-1440 pixels wide, and deliberately use a Creative Commons "attribution required, no commercial use, same license to be offered by you" (aka NC-BY-SA), with very occasional exceptions. I'm not particularly concerned if someone simply uses an image in a newsletter or homework assignment, but I'd like the Daily Flail to hand over moolah first.

Other than that, I'd recommend checking out the manifold communities that really make Flickr shine. With the bulk of my work being wildlife, especially rabbits, I'll frequently add mine to the "Bunny Lovers Unite" group, sometimes BBC [season]watch or similar, depending on where it seems to best belong. It <i>is</i> a nice feeling to receive comments and favorites. ^_^

I do wish Flickr offered the option of placing Flattr buttons by one's work. Even the odd few deci-currency units add up, and as we all know, DSLR equipment is anything but free, especially when it comes to long reach, where something like the Nikkor 300mm f/4D is at the low end of the price spectrum (but nonetheless, a truly excellent lens).
 
I have used flickr for a few years now, if you just have a free account you can only see your last 200 photos I think. You can set the availability of each image to anyone, friends, family or only you. I have any photos of mine that I upload with a keyword of family made private to family only, which is handy for sharing private family photos.

The only downside are silly post 1 award 5 and spam my magic pixie banner in all your posts groups(sweeper active??), making any comments thread 28 pages long.
 
Porsupah said:
I tend toward slightly larger sizes, usually around 1280-1440 pixels wide, and deliberately use a Creative Commons "attribution required, no commercial use, same license to be offered by you" (aka NC-BY-SA), with very occasional exceptions. I'm not particularly concerned if someone simply uses an image in a newsletter or homework assignment, but I'd like the Daily Flail to hand over moolah first.
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There are some commercial images users that see "creative commons" and don't check the "no commercial use" conditions. I've had a very nice payment from one of them for swiping a CC image. And from my correspondence with them this is their normal means of sourcing illustrations for their trade magazine.

As a result I have stopped using CC on Flickr and won't use it again, there are too many image sites using the Flickr API to search for CC images, ignoring the flavour of CC stated and offering it as "copyright free to download".

I could not recommend CC licensing via Flickr to anyone. Nice idea, but there is nothing behind it.
 
recently I took some high value, highly topical images, so when uploading them to flickr (and after pushing them round the internet as best I could) after watermarking them, keeping them at 800x600, and writing a lengthy footnote about copyright, and after only picking up 88 views I suddenly realised that you can't force something to go viral, and no one cared about the images anyway
seriously i'd worry about taking images that were worth stealing first
that's the trick- make images worth stealing, and then clients will pay you to make those 'steal-worthy' images under their direction. No one makes money selling images they've already taken- that's the job of an artist, are you an artist?
 
As I have a BT internet account I get a free Flickr pro account. I've uploaded most of my photos from the last 5years onto there. They're arranged in a collection for each year, which contain a collection for each month, which contain a set for each topic (e.g. holiday to France). This is basically a mirror of my photo folder structure on my PC. All pictures are uploaded in their original size, so Flickr is basically acting as a back-up of my photo collection.
But I only make a handful of photos visible to the public, the rest are private so only I can see them. It's easy to add photos to more than one set, so arranging which shots are public is easy as dragging them into the public set.
None of my photos are worthy of being stolen (other than family members taking pics of my daughter!) so that side of it doesn't bother me.
 
Cheers Tim, I was considering that too for a back up, not still quite sure on the cloud/online storage ethos yet :) I have several backups here at home which are automatic but backups stored elsewhere are a case of when I remember.
 
"Cheers Tim, I was considering that too for a back up, not still quite sure on the cloud/online storage ethos yet I have several backups here at home which are automatic but backups stored elsewhere are a case of when I remember."

For cloud storage consider Dropbox.....great for large image transfers and online storage.
 
Trappe said:
"Cheers Tim, I was considering that too for a back up, not still quite sure on the cloud/online storage ethos yet I have several backups here at home which are automatic but backups stored elsewhere are a case of when I remember."

For cloud storage consider Dropbox.....great for large image transfers and online storage.
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Cheers for that Rory, just checked my photo directory and its 46GB, maybe time for a spring clean, so that would mean having to pay yet another monthly fee, It would be cheaper for me to rent a domain and 250gb of server space and just FTP it all up.
 
Tim thanks a lot for the information regarding BT and the pro account, wasn't aware of it, very chuffed now with my new pro account.
 
No mater what you do people will ALWAYS take any pic they like. Most of my photos are of national autograss (Motorsport) it's an armature sport that doesn't get the publicity it should IMO and as such the drivers like to "help them selfs" to any pics they find. Now i put my email across my photos people have started to ask if they can have/use my pics. I do the photography thing for fun not money so more often than not I will let people use my photos, my Mrs says I should sell the pics as every £ will help towards new kit lol lol
 
The only way to stop people nicking your photos off the net is don't put them on in the first place. I only put photos on Flickr for the particular purpose of uploading them to forums such as this and would never put any commissioned photos on there at all. If people want to download my Flickr photos that's OK by me, I'm not trying to make a living out of it, the size and compression needed for such photos make most of the un-publishable anyway.
 
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