How To Get The Most Out of Flickr
If you’re here just to discover beautiful images, find design assets, or be inspired you’ll want to:
Join Groups
Groups are the lifeblood and backbone of Flickr. This is where you can find other photographers that are interested in the same styles, subjects, locations that you are! There are millions of groups out there and each is independently organized with different rules as to how they operate. Search your interests and join groups to add to their photo pool and get visibility for your photography.
Favorites & Galleries
As you begin to discover the photos, videos, or resources you need you can easily collect them in two main ways. Click the star to simply Favorite an image. This will save on your profile chronologically from when you faved a particular image. If you are collecting and saving resources around a specific theme or for a specific project then you should create a Gallery. Galleries act in many ways like visual storyboards. It can serve as a collection of others’ work around your theme or needs.
Image Search
Search on Flickr taps into billions of images and can be as broad or as granular as you wish. To search for photos with a specific term, tag, group, user simply type in the search bar on the upper right of the Navigation Bar. You can also see what’s Trending in real time or for the week. In searching for specific items you can add advanced options which include file size, orientation, date take time windows, license type or filter results by relevance, interestingness, date take, or by date uploaded. There are also Safe and NSFW search settings. If you’re looking for something rather specific there are also filters for color, shot type (black and white, shallow depth of field, minimalist, patterns) to further narrow your results.
Explore
The Flickr Explore section is the best of the best from the previous day. This typically means the best quality but also can mean most viewed or engaged with. Another way to find great new photography is on your feed, which shows new photos in Groups or from People you follow.
If you really want to get sucked down the beautiful Flickr rabbit hole, we recommend Favorites. When you come across a photo or a photographer you really love go to his or her profile and click ‘FAVORITES’ to view the photos he or she has favorited. Often time they’re very similar in style, subject matter, and aesthetic. This is an easy and fast way to find a curated selection of great work that you are sure to love and respond to.
Copyright
Flickr offers 11 Copyright designations a photographer can assign to his or her account or to individual photos. Using someone’s work without respecting their copyright settings can result in legal action and Flickr is not responsible for how you use a photographer’s images. You can view an image’s copyright on the individual photopage under the Date Taken. All institution accounts in the Flickr Commons are free-use and public domain images, as are verified government account.