Flickr assignment

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23728129@N06/sets/72157603900642670/show/
Sally, Michal, Katie, and I created this Flickr story.

That is the link to our awesome flickr story about Ugg boots and how every girl loves them and guys hate them... until they give in and try them on! To be honest, at first I wasn't very excited about doing the flickr assignment because it didn't sound very fun to me but I actually found it very fun and interesting. I'm glad we changed it up a bit and did something outside of the classroom. Plus, it was nice to get to know some of my classmates. Now I know at least one member in my blog group!

David Silver talks about photojournalism and how Flickr is (well, can be used as) an example of this. Silver defines photojournalism as "news reporting, enabled by the Internet, done by a dispersed, unorganized group of people — or a group that spontaneously (and temporarily) organizes around their interest in a particular event." Now, in the examples we used in class and many other examples online in Flickr, this is not the case. Our class didn't really make a photo- news story because we were experimenting and having fun with it. This is the case with a lot of the other stories on Flickr. I took a virtual look around Flickr to see other people's photos and saw that they had a lot to do with their personal lives more than on reporting news. However, Flickr offers a quick and easy way to creatively tell a story about anything that interests you, even if that may be news-related. However, Flickr is an internet-based tool, used by an unorganized group of people about a particular event. So, in fact, whether or not the story is news-related is irrelevant. Flickr is a tool used by many for many different stories.
In relation to Maderazo's blog about how Flickr can lead someone in the right direction and even spark a photog career, I agree on her basis for her comment. I can now see how that is possible by using this tool to post really neat and creative photos online for millions of users to view. Then, it is simple to get feedback on what the users liked or disliked. Someone who was really interested in photography could get a lot of helpful hints and useful information on how to take "good quality" pictures and they can learn how to use internet-based tools to reach a wide variety of users.
Flickr is a tool that I have never even heard of before this class, let alone ever used. I'm not sure that I would continue to place photos on this site because I'm not sure how protective it is and I don't want my personal life displayed on the internet, photos and all. However, I really enjoyed this project and I'm glad I got to try it out.