Flickr… where have you gone?

There was a stretch of time where I was really into Flickr.

I mean really into it.

I’m not sure where that ceased, but it likely has something to do with Instagram and such.

Still, I miss Flickr. Quite a bit, actually. It’s a really good community of photographers and a great place to get inspiration for photos/projects etc. It’s also a good place to just see what other people do, get tips and such. And I miss it.

A few years ago, I’d upload many things to Flickr. I’d have albums and all sorts of things. It was fun. The community was cool. It was fun to comment on other people’s photos and, sometimes, get comments on yours.

Somewhere, though, it got tedious. I’m not exactly sure where that happened, but it did. So I kind of stopped using Flickr, outside of uploading things I needed for blogs and such.

In 2014, I kind of got away from “real” photography. I call it real because by it I mean using my real camera, not relying on iPhone and such. Even with the monthly photo blogging challenge, a lot was done via the iPhone.

That is all hopefully going to change now.

My Canon 7D has been acting up recently and I had to start deciding if I was going to continue to try and get it repaired, or upgrade. I’ve had it for nearly five years and I’ve had to have take easily more than 100,000 photos with it. That means, eventually, the shutter would probably go on it, too. But it’s been dropped and such… the focus is off, it doesn’t read a battery even when fully charged and… well, you get the picture.

That meant decision time. After hemming and hawing for a bit, I finally decided to dive in and upgrade and I got myself the Canon 7D Mark II. My initial thoughts on this camera are that it’s amazing. But that’s not, for now, the point of this post.

My main decision is that I need to challenge myself photographically again. I want to be able to take photos and enjoy doing it. I want to share my images. I want to understand this new camera and learn all of its functions and capabilities. Basically, I want to really dive into photography again.

And, with that, I think I need to get back into Flickr. There are so many amazing photographers out there and a lot of them are on Flickr. It’s fun to see what people do and sometimes find out how they do it.

That also brings me to the one reason I wanted to do this post — it seems I’m not the only one who got away from Flickr. When I started up with it years ago, I found many really good people who took photos and shared. It’s cool to see or try and see what people were thinking when they took a photo. Be it an angle, a setup or something else.

As I looked through those I follow, so many of them haven’t uploaded anything in more than a few years. That’s too bad, too, as it would be nice to see how they are all doing. Some of those I truly used to enjoy aren’t even part of Flickr anymore.

That just means I need to look up some new people to see what’s out there. I’m looking forward to photography again … without it just being the iPhone.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!