When Flickr Ruled the World

There are many types of things in life that are simple to learn, yet difficult to master. Perhaps one of the simplest of these is photography. With a simple click of a button you instantly have an image, and with modern digital technology, you can instantly see the fruits of your labors by simply glancing at a small liquid crystal display. When I was a child first being introduced to photography, I was instructed to capture my images conservatively, as there was a limited amount of film. That, mixed with the element of anticipation to see how your pictures turned out was more than enough motivation to keep taking photos.

Anyone who has ever owned a digital camera can relate the the liberating feeling of instantly snapping and discarding photos from their camera, bound only by the battery life and the hard disk space on their computer. After owning a few digital cameras now, the excitement eventually wore off due to dealing with process. Getting the images off of the camera and onto my computer was easy, but what good is that if you aren't going to share them with anyone? The process of methodically resizing, renaming and uploading my photos to the web sucked. It was boring, took too much time, and simply wasn't worth the effort.

Well, that is until I started using Flickr.

Flickr is simply the greatest thing since sliced bread. It thumbnails your images, it's easy to manage, categorize and organize your images. It's easy to share them. Their API rocks. You probably already knew this and I'm preaching to the choir.

While Flickr itself may not change the world, as there are are already lookalikes that have been popping up around the interweb, what it can do for us will change the way we think about taking photos. It makes us want to take photos again because we can share them so easily.I just started using Flickr last week, and I got so excited that I built a new gallery just so I can keep myself motivated to keep using it.

If you're like me, and you think about all the cool things you've done and places you've seen that you didn't capture a memory for, you may want to try Flickr out if you haven't already (I know, I am so behind the times). You might surprise yourself.