Flickr Usage

I am sure some people curate more and less heavily, but I think we all do it. I took a lot lot of pictures in Ecuador, and many were crap -- boring, didn't capture what I was going for, out of focus. In fact, in many cases I took a lot of pictures of the same thing, knowing that later I could choose the best one. So, flickr got all my pictures from that trip that I thought were unique, told a story or shared a special experience, were visually interesting, etc.

That said, my family uses flickr much more like twitter in that we post a lot of pictures that may not seem to have a lot of art or interest value to the rest of the world, but do help us stay in touch with each other and what we're up to. We do a lot of commenting. It's like blogging only easier to do and easier for all members of our family to participate in.

Yeah, I'm all for quality and certainly not saying people should post EVERY picture. The use of word "curate" implies that there is a lot of goof being cut out to only present the great. I want the good!

says the man behind reality internet!

sorry, i'm w/steve & jona on this one... honestly the greatest thing about flickr is its adaptability. since when does something have to be what its creators intended it to be? the internet certainly is a happy accident afterall.

very best to you!

my camera breaks & where is that little cord?

I definitely don't "curate" as much, but I can understand it, keeping it to interesting pictures only like freddy was saying.

I think I got bored of putting of uncurated or I just became a harsher critic on my photos. Flickr has inspired me to take photography more seriously and i'm unhappy putting up photos i don't like. ALSO, I want to put up stuff that I think will be interesting to my contacts, and a lot of times I think not enough people will be interested.

I love Flickr. I think it can be used in many ways. I have used it in more than one way.

It hurts a Flickr stream (or anything really) when you start to think of your output as having to be appropriate for your entire audience. If you have a picture to post that you know one person will like, you should post it. Make the private things public... it's better.

Why is it better?
I really find that I enjoy things that have obviously had some attention paid to curation.
It shows thought, which I really appreciate on the web.
I thought at UH we were all about leaning away from the norm of "bloggin" which is just spilling all your boring guts out about your meals or your day at work. To me, crummy photos are like bad food blog posts. One person might be interested that you ate at subway for lunch, but that isn't always enough! Sometimes you have to separate yourself and one way to do that is curation.

I think one problem here is that we are both looking at the extreme version of the other person's point of view.

Clearly I don't want anyone to post every photo.

And of course, regardless of this conversation, people are free to use their sites however they want.

But what I like about blogs and Flickr is the "behind the scenes" look into someone's life. If I look at a flickr and I find ti boring, well, that's cool, I'd prolly find them boring too. That's honest.

When you carefully select your entries and curate only the most interesting and best photos I don't get to see behind the curtain, I only get to see the "show" that you are presenting.

I find delayed and carefully selected photos on Flickr to be boring. Save the curation for a blog. Flickr isn't a photo blog, it's a social website about pictures.

REAL TALK!

All of it can't be backstage.
You need a "show" sometimes, and personally I prefer shows to backstage. I like some backstage.
I think a good parallel is DVDs. I would rather watch more movies than watch some movies and lots of special features. Special Features are mostly BORINGS.

Interesting point.

But special features are for fans of the original work. The more you like the DVD, the more compelling a very boring special feature will be to you.

I feel like your DVD is your blog, your label, your podcast, and all of that. You already have your output... where is your special feature? None? We just don't get to see anything?

Why are you hiding all that? And who are you hiding it from?

A little off topic, but I'd like to point out a very highly curated use of Twitter.

http://twitter.com/jennyholzer

someone has used the platform to re-present Jenny Holzer's series of truisms.

more information about Holzer and her truisms here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenny_Holzer

Having just witnessed the painstaking, multi-year birth processes of two documentaries, and talked to several other documentarians about others, I have to say that the claim that they are not curated is deeply flawed. Pretty much any issue or story is longer and more complex than it is reasonable to present in two hours. Makers of documentaries have to cut out an INCREDIBLE amount of detail, subtlety and/or great but irrelevant footage so that the finished product comes across as interesting and understandable to the viewing public.

Personally, I think what is inspiring about Flickr is the multitude of different ways it can be used - as a place to share shapshots with your granny in Florida, as a showcase for your serious photography, as a showcase for your photographs of your serious art that's not photography, as an ancillary site to host photos used on other sites, as a venue for some Italian dude's weird art project where he takes melodramatic shots of himself grieving over his breakup with his girlfriend, whatever. It seems weird to say that only one of these uses is the correct one and that all the others are "wrong."

As in every argument I've ever been in, it all seems to come down to the meaning of the words...

I love documentaries, probably my favorite type of film, and I didn't mean to say that are not carefully made, I was trying to express how they attempt to show something real.

To Curate is to "select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition)," which of course could mean pretty much anything we want. The problem I have with the term "curate" is that it implies you are throwing out good photos that don't "fit" with the theme or idea you are presenting.

If you are just filtering for quality, that isn't curating.

Maybe the real issue here is that neither Jona or Steve is actually curating their Flickr, they just like to use that word.

nice post boys & girls..all beautiful minds here folks !! BON MATIN