And I'm back on Flickr

After almost six years of not publishing anything on Flickr, I am now back on that platform.

Why? Because it’s nice to have a presence on a platform that lets you publish a public photo stream. (Unlike Instagram, which I wrote about a few months ago.)

It’s not just that though. Flickr lets you organise your photos into albums and publishes the EXIF metadata of the photos you have uploaded. You can also tag your photos, add them to public galleries, favourite other people’s photos, and even sell your photos.

Basically, it’s a great place to share your photos — and it works well for both amateur and professional photographers alike.

Closing the gap

I’ve now spent the last few days uploading five years’ worth of ‘missing’ photos to my Flickr profile. These are the photos I originally posted only to various social media channels or to this blog.

Now there is no gap between when I stopped publishing photos to Flickr back in 2017 and when I’ve resumed publishing there now (in December 2022).

If you’re someone who follows me on Flickr, I apologise for all the photo spam! Fortunately, that’s all done now.

Diagram showing four timelines. The one on top is labeled ‘Flickr’ and is in two parts. Its first part starts on 2 Mar 2007 and ends on 7 May 2017. Its second part, which is shaded in orange, starts from 30 Dec 2022 and continues to present day. The two middle timelines are labelled ‘Instagram only’ (2017-2019) and ‘Instagram’ (8 Nov 2012 to 9 Apr 2019). The bottom timeline is labelled ‘Random tangent blog’ (1 Jan 2019 to now) and this is also coloured orange.

Double the fun

Going forward I will post all my photos to this blog as well as to Flickr.

And, while you’re welcome to scroll back through this blog to see all the photos I’ve shared over the years, it’ll probably be easier to see them all in one place on Flickr :)

Unlocked Instagram photos 4: Jul 2018 to Dec 2018

July 2018

Melbourne

August 2018

Melbourne

September 2018

Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane

October 2018

Melbourne

November 2018

Melbourne

December 2018

Melbourne

Unlocked Instagram photos 3: Jan 2018 to Jun 2018

January 2018

Melbourne

February 2018

Melbourne

March 2018

Melbourne

April 2018

Melbourne

May 2018

Melbourne

June 2018

Melbourne

Unlocked Instagram photos 2: Jul 2017 to Dec 2017

July 2017

Melbourne, Sorrento

August 2017

Melbourne

September 2017

Melbourne

October 2017

Melbourne, Dubai, Karachi

November 2017

Karachi, Islamabad, Melbourne

December 2017

Melbourne

Unlocked Instagram photos 1: Dec 2016 to Jun 2017

December 2016

Sydney, Melbourne, Freemantle

January 2017

Melbourne

February 2017

Melbourne

March 2017

Melbourne, Avalon

April 2017

Melbourne

May 2017

Melbourne

June 2017

Melbourne, Sorrento

My lost years on Instagram

I’m not a fan of tightly gated internet communities. By ‘tightly gated’ I mean communities (ie social networks) that don’t provide public RSS feeds and also don’t let you view anyone’s content without being logged in yourself.

Instagram is one such gated community.

All my photos used to be publicly accessible

Before 2007 I didn’t publicly share many photos online. Those that I did, I uploaded as albums to this website – like my engagement and wedding photos.

Then in 2007 I joined Flickr and started posting all my photos there. Flickr was an excellent site, and I even had a paid account for several years.

Instagram launched its Android app in April 2012, so a few months later I started posting photos there as well. During this period I cross-posted all my photos to both Instagram and Flickr.

Flickr stagnated, Instagram innovated

Unfortunately, Yahoo! pretty much stopped investing in Flickr. So, while Instagram was becoming increasingly easier and more fun to use, Flickr stayed where it was.

That’s why from 2017 I stopped cross-posting, and instead posted all my photos to Instagram only.

Facebook locked down Instagram

In the earlier days of Instagram you could still browse someone’s profile and look through all their photos without needing an Instagram account yourself. But, over time, Facebook made Instagram an increasingly tighter gated community.

Recognising this was happening, from the start of 2019 I started cross posting all my photos to this blog. That’s where we are now.

Diagram showing four timelines. Three of these are light grey in colour and are labeled ‘Flickr’ (2 Mar 2007 to 7 May 2017), ‘Instagram’ (8 Nov 2012 to 9 Apr 2019), and ‘Random tangent blog’ (1 Jan 2019 to now). One is orange in colour and is labeled ‘Instagram only’ (2017-2019).

Unlocking two years of ‘lost’ photos

What all this means is that I have almost two years’ worth of photos locked inside Instagram’s walled garden. This is what I’m now here to fix.

Over the next four posts I’ll re-share all my Instagram photos from 2017 and 2018 that are currently only available on that platform.

Here goes…