Notable Websites Series – Flickr

After the birth of my son, I discovered a passion for photography. I could easily snap a minimum of 300 photos a month of my son. I initially archived my photos onto a CD, but started thinking that if something should ever happen to my house, such as a fire, they could all be gone. I already had an account on Flickr, where I am part of a private online photography group consisting of a bunch of moms with cameras, and decided that was where I would archive my photos. I had to upgrade to a paid unlimited account since I took more photographs in a month then the free account allowed me to upload, but for the peace of mind of knowing I will always have my photographs the cost seemed worth it.


Flickr (part of the Yahoo! company) is a great site for photo management, hosting, and sharing and has recently included the ability to upload short videos. The free account gives users the ability to upload 100MB each month. You select your comfort zone for sharing your photos and have the option to make the photos private, friends and/or family, or public. The majority of my photos are set to friends/family, though I do have some, mostly landscape-type photos that are public.

One of the features I like most about Flickr is the photo hosting ability. Many of the other photo hosting sites provides you a code for your photo as uploaded. On Flickr, you have the option to select the size of the photo you want to host. This is particularly useful when hosting photos for use on message boards. On Flickr, you can upload the photo in its original size and then select between thumbnail, square, small, medium, large, and original for the photo url; depending on the size of the original photo. Very cool!