Immediately I was struck by the sudden enforced change Yahoo had made whereby the Beta 'Photo Experience,' which up until that point had been optional, had now been foisted on all Flickr members. It was horrendously messy to say the least. I could not immediately see anyone's comments on my own photos, leaving me wondering how to respond to people. Furthermore when I tried to share a photo directly to Twitter social media site via the Flickr share button, it appeared that the ampersand we all use freely to shorten the word 'and' was not in Flickr's dictionary and therefore couldn't handle it. The resulting protest tweet made me look like a fumbling numpty:
.@Flickr Complaints Dept what were u thinking this eve now want 2 up sticks & leave https://t.co/UN90ntSHrG
— Wendy Clark (@twinklespinalot) March 25, 2014
Like others I took to social media for a good ol' rant, because like it or not, this is what we do on occasions like this, right? I wanted to throw buckets of paint around, chew on my own intestines, smash a thousand plates and worse, I wanted to do this:
'Change' as a way of naming something is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as:
"An act or process through which something becomes different"Most people associate change with the adjective 'better', which is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as:
"More desirable, satisfactory or effective"Arguably one of the most popular photography sharing sites on the internet suddenly overnight became neither desirable, satisfactory or effective; it was disagreeable, unacceptable and feckless.
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| Yes...it's Pollux! |
From my point of view Flickr was all about a central, clean and easy to use site for showcasing my amateur photography and viewing other members photography progress in a fascinating hobby which has captured my imagination since I first played with an old Russian Zenit EM camera at the age of 12. As my hobby has grown over the years, technology has moved on to the digital age bringing new insights and huge learning curves. As the internet has grown both technology and information have exploded into our lives to the point where we believe at times that we cannot be without something that connects us to it in a user-friendly manner. It's what we expect from advances in technology and when it fails to live up to expectations, as users we are capable of upping sticks and looking elsewhere.
Step away, sit back and breathe slowly...you have a choice as to where you put your faith and support in technology and there is more than one road open for the ride today.
The official help forum thread on the new 'Photo Experience' interface says it all and the responses on it makes for some interesting reading, notable feedback so far:
"With each design change, the site gets more and more inconsistent"
"Sorry, I cannot thank you for something I never wanted.."
"You guys don't seem to understand some very basic, simple rules of photography and displaying images. The large size image needs to be framed all the way around. Not just on two sides, or three sides, but ALL FOUR SIDES!! The portraits are clipped on the top and bottom - no framing whatsoever. The landscapes on the right have a very narrow margin, and no margin on the left. This is so basic, I cannot comprehend how anyone would allow this to happen."
I tried to view a solar image on Flickr this morning from one of my favourite photographers, Mr James Lennie, 5 mins had gone by and .....only half the solar image was showing.
For some time and also since the last lot of changes were rolled out on Flickr in 2013, I have been toying with abandoning the site and joining 500px. Although 500px is free to use, the $25 a year 'Plus' service appeals more to me now following copyright mis-use of my photographs by two well-known national newspapers in late February 2014 (that's a good blog for another day folks!).
I need protection and ease of use if I'm to continue sharing my photography, it's taken a long while and a lot of effort to get to where I am with this hobby and I'm very proud of my achievements in this field so far as I know a lot of my friends online are of their own efforts. To have a large corporation take it's users and affront them in this manner with a confusing hotchpotch of their own ideas on how a social media sharing site should look does not endear me to publishing my work any further with them.
Social media, whether we like it or not is an important tool for the whole world and beyond. It connects us to like-minded people, provokes debate, provides insight and lets us view the world from wherever we are at that moment.
Imagine for a second you are bound to your home, unable to travel outside those confines for health or personal reasons. Now imagine your only contact with the outside world is online. With vast streams of content and access to trillions of places via photography, video and live news the world opens up into your psyche and you now feel a part of that world just by being able to view it. Before long you are connecting with people and places you never dreamed of.
It's not hard to also imagine how depressing that might end up if you spend all your time trying to figure out the tools and navigation elements to get there from one day to the next.
It will be sad to leave Flickr as I follow a lot of great photographers, but I think letting it be for a while and going elsewhere is the best thing to do. We've all talked about it before and we've all hung on in the hope no-one tinkers further with it, but that day has come for me and I'm moving on. I'll check back with my Flickr friends from time to time and I'm sad for people who only yesterday just started following but I'm already in a new pasture.
A change of field definitely should be for the better.
I'll leave you with this view because it was the first thing I saw on 500px most popular and it really did sum up today's thoughts on the Flickr changes:
Sums it all up really today.....Photo “hello and goodbye” by Rune Askeland #500px http://t.co/WoErsdQ8k9
— Wendy Clark (@twinklespinalot) March 26, 2014
