Photography and social media

A couple of months ago, I went through an amazing experience of the power of social media as applied to photography.

I use a popular website called Flickr for showcasing my artistic photographs and currently have a portfolio of over 500 pictures, posted over more than 5 years. One of the pictures I uploaded (of a bird) was selected by Flickr to be in their “Explore” showcase. Although some 500 photos are selected everyday for this honor, the odds are quite small considering the fact that 8.6 million pictures are uploaded on an average day. The selection is done through a secret algorithm (which I think relies on who likes your pictures and how many likes you get). 

In any case, that initial selection was followed by three more of my pictures being so selected, all within ten days. Now, Flickr has 100 million members, and many of them look at Explore on a regular basis, so this is what happened:

-- In just one day, I had more than 22,000 views of my portfolio, about fifth of the total number over five years!

--Just one picture (of a female Red-Winged Blackbird) had over 30,000 views in two days, far exceeding 3,000 views of a picture I had posted previously, and that took a few years.

--Previously, some of my pictures were "favorited" by about 10 people, while one of the pictures that appeared on Explore (of a Bluebird) had 240 people favoriting it.

Although, this is not strictly a viral distribution, I experienced what it must feel like. I got a glimpse at how social media works in the world of photography.

This is how it works.

Just like the other social media sites, like FaceBook and LinkedIn, Flickr creates a network of people interested in a common goal. The "social contract" on Flickr is that two photographers "follow" each other. This is essentially the same as making friends on FaceBook or contacts in LinkedIn, except; in this case, you do not know the other person. Once you decide to follow someone, his/her pictures are displayed for your reviews and comments.

The way you expand your network is to "follow" photographers at large, say, based on what is displayed on Explore, and hope that he/she will do the same. Soon, the reverse starts happening, and people request you to follow them, and you accept request, partly based on what type of pictures he/she takes and who else within your network is common (much like on LinkedIn or FB).

The "currency" in use is how many people "favorite" your photo (much like "like" in FaceBook) and comments they make, which are almost always positive. The more of these you get, the better you feel about your picture. These number of favorites you get is based on two criteria, how "good" is the picture, and equally important, if not more, how large is your network. My network has suddenly expanded after appearance on Explore because of two reasons: (i) I have lots of people I can approach ---those who favorited my Explore photos (since I know they like my photographs), and (ii) A lot of people now want to follow me, as I now have the distinction of having some of my pictures selected to be on Explore.

This is how social media works in the wonderful world of photography. It is all fun and games and, as such, hopefully does not inflate ones ego too much ;-)