---

Now that you know what Flickr is, and how you become a Flickrmember--it's time to learn how you can upload your first photo!

To cook up this task, make sure you have all the right ingredients:

• Some photos on your computer--or just upload your desktop wallpaper!
  
• A Flick account--we already have Scooby Gooseberry's account!
  
• A browser and internet connection--you are reading this, so you already have that!
  

And here's how you put all those ingredients together:

1. Open your browser, make sure you are connected and log into your Flickr account.
   
   
2. Click the Upload your first photo link (see Figure 1). If you cannot find the upload link, just type in this URL in your browser (or click the link!) : http://www.flickr.com/photos/upload/ -- if you are not signed in, Flickr will prompt you for your login and password info.
   
   
   Figure 1: Upload your first photo
   
   
3. This will take you to the Upload photos page that can be seen in Figure 2 below:
   
   
   Figure 2: Browse and choose the photos you want to upload
   
   
4. Click any of the Browse buttons to find the photo on your computer that you want to upload. You have six Browse buttons on this page, so you can choose six photos at a time to upload. Wait, don't click the Upload button yet--there are some options you must first examine.
   
   
5. Right below the Browse buttons is a text box that allows you to type in some tags--think of these tags as keywords for your photos. For example, if the photos you are uploading are from your secret vacation to the North Pole, you could use these words as tags for the photos:
   
   north pole
   cold
   freezing
   secret
   vacation
   december 2009
   
   At this time, adding these tags might not be high on your list of priorities, but a few years from today--when your Flickr account has a gazillion photos you'll appreciate that you tagged all your photo uploads since that will make those photos easier to search for you--and for others who are permitted to see your photos. So for now just add those tags--and separate those tags with commas.
   
   
6. Next, choose your privacy settings--I explained these in an earlier post, but here they are again (see Figure 2):
   
   Private: Unless you also check the Visible to Friends and/or Visible to Family boxes, all Private photos will only be visible to you. In fact, even you will have to sign into your Flickr account to see them. This is a great option if you want to just backup your photos.
   
   Visible to Friends: These photos will only be visible to you and those contacts whom you identify as Friends.
   
   Visible to Family: These photos will only be visible to you and those contacts whom you identify as Family.
   
   Visible to Friends and Family: Just check both the options.
   
   Public: This means anyone can see your photos--just anyone and they don't even have to be Flickr members.
   
   I normally just mark all my photos without any human faces as public, but you'll want to decide what works for you. Whichever option you choose, these privacy settings can be changed for each uploaded photo anytime.
   
   
7. Now click the Upload button--the resultant screen will ask you to wait until your photos are being uploaded (see Figure 3).
   
   
   Figure 3: Photos being uploaded
   
   Unless you have a very slow internet connection, you can open another browser window and do something else until the photos are uploaded.
   
   
8. When the photos are uploaded, Flickr asks you to add descriptions for each uploaded photo (see Figure 4). Add descriptions as required and then click the Save button at the bottom of the page.
   
   
   Figure 4: Add descriptions for photos uploaded to Flickr
   
   
9. That's it--you've uploaded your photos!

In upcoming posts, I'll show you how you can drag a bunch or even an entire folder of photos to your Flickr account using the uploading tools available from Flickr.

And no I haven't forgotten this--here's a link to Scooby Gooseberry's photos on Flickr...

See Also: Flickr Tutorial Series

1 comments

Links to this post

---

Although you can browse public photos at Flickr without becoming a member, there are many things you still cannot do a Flickr without becoming a member:

• You cannot upload and share your own photos
• You cannot view for-invitation-only photos uploaded by your friends and families to their Flickr accounts
• You cannot link any photos to your blog
• You cannot comment on any photo
  

Obviously, the first thing you want to do is become a member.

In this post, I'll explain the process to you about how you can become a free member. In a later post, I'll discuss the advantages of upgrading to a Pro account. Remember that even if you never upgrade to a Pro account, you can do almost everything up to a certain limit using a Free account.

Here's how you can sign up to Flickr:

1. The first thing you need to sign into Flickr as a member is a Yahoo! account--most people have Yahoo! mail accounts and if you don't have one, do get signed up using this link--then come back and read the rest of this tutorial.
   
   Before Yahoo! acquired Flickr, the sign-up did not require a Yahoo! account--so that may explain why your friend signed up for Flickr without a Yahoo! account.
   
   
2. Just head to Flickr and and opt to sign up using the convenient button/link on their homepage (see Figure 1 below).
   
   
   Figure 1: The Sign up link on Flickr's homepage
   
   
3. This will take you to the Sign In page where you just log in with your Yahoo! login and password (see Figure 2 below).
   
   
   Figure 2: Login to your Yahoo! account on Flickr.com
   
   
4. Once you sign in, there's one more step still left. You'll get an option to change your screen name on Flickr (see screenshot)--and your screen name can be different from your Yahoo login.
   
   Although by default your screen name is your Yahoo login ID, it's a good idea to change it here since the changed name can have spaces. It's always better for an audience to know that they are seeing Scooby Gooseberry's photos on Flickr than from someone called scoobygb2006!
   
   
   Figure 3: Change your screen name
   
   
5. That's all you need to know to sign up to Flickr. In subsequent posts, you and me will use Scooby Gooseberry's account on Flickr to search and comment on Flickr and upload our first photo.

See Also: Flickr Tutorial Series

1 comments

Links to this post

---

Flickr is a photo-sharing site that lets you upload your photos, and make them more interesting to an audience by adding comments, descriptions, and tags to them.

Photos can be grouped in sets.

Flickr provides several ways to share your uploaded photos:

• You can choose to share them with everyone--Flickr calls this sort of sharing public.
• You can create two distinct sharing options called friends and family. In this case, anyone who is on your friends list, or family list can view the photos.
• Flickr also allows you to provide both friends and family sharing options--these contacts can view photos from either distinction.
• Finally, if you don't want to share the photos with anyone but yourself--in that case you designate such photos as private.

Whichever way you share your photos, the best thing about Flickr is that you no longer have to worry about web hosting, creating photo thumbnails, or sending huge email attachments containing your photos!

Not surprisingly, Flickr has became immensely popular in a short time--in fact so popular that Yahoo! acquired the site--Flickr is now part of Yahoo!

I really like Flickr--it's easy to use, and has so many features that you'll need some time to explore them all. At last count, Flickr had over 2.5 million members and that number must have been old news by now!

Having said that, I found no good Flickr related site that explains everything that a beginner or even a seasoned user wants to know. Maybe that's because Flickr is so easy to use--but Flickr has so many features that you'll never know about if you don't go exploring!

Luckily, I've been doing so much Flickr exploring these days. In coming blog posts, I'm going to discuss a lot of Flickr related stuff--I'll also look at other photo-hosting sites, free photo resources, stock imagery, etc.


Figure: A screenshot from the Flickr site

If you click the above screenshot, it will take you straight to my photo collection of over 500 (as of the time of writing) public photos hosted on Flickr. Remember the above link will open a new browser window or tab and if your popup blocker doesn't allow you to open a new window, just right-click the image and choose one of the Open options--these options are a little different depending upon which browser you use.

Feel free to sign into Flickr--if you already have a Yahoo! mail ID, you can use that to sign into Flickr. In fact, here is a tutorial on signing into Flickr for the first time...

Flickr is a great time-waster as well--just search for a picture on any topic and you might be surprised by the visual content that is shown. It's almost like a photo dictionary put up by users all over the world! I even found 10 pictures when I searched for the keyword "gobbledygook"!!! Flickr also has a page with the most popular keywords people are searching.

Naturally many people won't call that wasting time! And actually, you don't even need to be a member to view all the public photos on Flickr. Membership brings you many more options though. Flickr provides two types of memberships--Free and Pro. I'll tell you more about the difference and how you can use this wonderful site in upcoming posts.

See Also: Flickr Tutorial Series

1 comments

Links to this post

---

Consider this an index of all the Flickr tutorial posts that I have put up on this blog. I'll continue updating this page as I add more content.

1. Starting with Flickr
2. Signing up for Flickr
3. Uploading Photos to Flickr--01
4. Creating a Flickr Web Address
5. Who is Scooby Gooseberry?
6. What are Flickr Sets?
   

1 comments

Links to this post

---

I'll admit Indezine is a PowerPoint related site--and I've been at a loss finding out ways to add more content on related topics. Naturally, I don't want to add all this stuff to the PowerPoint pages on this site since that would be unfair to users who don't want to look beyond that program.

The best solution seemed to create another part of the site, and I knew this had to be a blog since blogs allow comments and many more niceties. So MediaMazine was born--MediaMazine will look at new media technologies, and that's certainly as broad a definition as I had hoped for!

So do bookmark this page, and send me your feedback about what you want to see here. Have a great day.

0 comments

Links to this post

---

Archives:

May 2006  |  June 2006  |  February 2007  |  July 2008  |  October 2008  |  November 2008  |  December 2008  |  February 2009  |