October 10, 2007
Soybean Field of Gold
who knew soybeans were beautiful...?
Fine Art Inspiration…on Flickr?
There’s a lot of trash on Flickr. So much so, that it’s easy to find opinions that Flickr has no redeeming value in the realm of real fine art photography, the quality just isn’t there. Many of photography’s elite view Flickr’s most “artful” images generally as cheap technical experiments and dramatic visual clichés motivated to boost view counts the number of times favored. Is Flickr really just a cute MySpace community of lackluster photo hacks used to share emo self-portaits, cameraphone pics of your too cute cat and fresh HDR experiments? Or can Flickr be a viable asset to “fine art” photographers?
A Rocky Start
I don’t think the work on Flickr is as dismal as some do. Although admittedly in the minority, I have found a substantial of work there that I feel is strong enough to hang in exhibit next to say…a Stephen Shore. So where does outcry originate from? The unweb-savvy and non-Flickr members are large part of it I’m sure, a good Flickr experience does take some legwork. Start not signed in from the home page and you will get the idea. To survey the photography landscape, you can either search or go “exploring“. Searching is an effective tool but it’s not a helpful starting point. Exploring can be fruitful, but it’s really just a glorified popularity contest. It’s not easy to wade past the millions of images of common vernacular photography and curate on what really is artful and visually successful from 75 × 75 pixel thumbnails. You painstakingly shift through a stream of average snapshots for that glimmer of exceptional photography. There is a huge community that contributes to this dizzying array of content, and that community is also one of Flickr’s greatest strengths. Use this as leverage to lead you to Flickr’s gold.
Your Contact’s Contacts Pyramid Scheme
For me, one of the most effective ways of discovering some of the best Flickr has to offer is by looting through my contact’s contacts. People who you respect enough to list as a contact more than likely will have contacts who are exceptional photographers as well. From there it just keeps going and growing, those contacts are likely to list some additional good photographers and so on. However, the key here is to practice discretion. Someone with an absurd number of contacts is a warning sign to me that they’re not being selective enough about who to list and is really in need a few more MySpace friends. It’s an exit cue for me because their contacts are probably a rather unfocused list that could be a waste of my time. Personally, my general rule is to select contacts that are only friends, family or people whose photographic work I respect and really find inspirational. This helps keep my contact photostream fresh and full of motivational imagery. When someone graciously lists me as a contact, I return the favor only if I feel their work could contribute nicely to my contact stream of inspiration. It’s a simple critical contact acceptance policy helps keep my Flickr experience as effective as possible.
It not only your contact’s contacts. Your contact’s favorites is another great way to find the good stuff on Flickr. For me, favorites are a different but equally effective inspirational resource. I think of my favorites as single instances of a connection with another photographer. For instance, I’m browsing your photo stream, and sorry, it’s not my really my taste. However, I find this one shot of you with a banana in your ear incredible (small joke), so I’ll mark it as a favorite, rather than mark you as a contact.
A Stream of Solid Gold
Flickr’s community is huge, and I find it most helpful to use the community to find the best work. Sure, the trade-off is by not accepting every contact invitation and not joining every group under the sun probably will mean less photo views. The hope is you’re gaining a more relevant audience while filling your contact stream with fresh imagery from photographers you really admire. This is a simple fine-art inspired contact pyramid scheme and it only takes one contact to start. Need some jumping off points? Here are a few other Flickr photographers who I have been enjoying recently:
Ok, you’ve seen some of mine. Who should I be checking out on Flickr?
Talk about it, 3 Comments so far
October 12, 2007 | 06:53AM, like 10 months ago
I think my friend Deb Sidelinger has a remarkable eye.
I love Kai's exposure of the underlying geometry of everyday life.
Cameron Adams has a sympathetic way of shooting people with his various toy cameras.
I find Rebecca Pendel's work unsettling. That's a compliment.
Angie Harris shoots in a very similar aesthetic to me, but I think she does it a lot better than I do.
– ralph aka thereisnocat on Flickr
October 13, 2007 | 10:05AM, like 10 months ago
I've never thought of Flickr as necessarily being a repository of "fine" photography. It is a photo sharing service, for all to use, after all and anything goes. Having said that I find the work of Brandon Hoover simply amazing :)
– John Lampard
October 14, 2007 | 09:26PM, like 10 months ago
Ralph, thanks for the links, they all are great. I really enjoyed Pendel’s photostream, it is dark and mysterious. Kinda reminds of Ralph Eugene Meatyard.
John, thanks for your link as well. Don’t get me wrong, I am not claiming Flickr is anything other than a community-based photo sharing site. I’m just discussing the role it can play in the fine art world.
– michael