Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Thing 10: Exploring images online

In this blog post we have been asked to take a look at some common online image sharing platforms, namely; Flickr, Pinterest, and Instagram. 

Having never previously come across Flickr, I found it rather interesting; similarly to google images, its great to be able to find photos of any particular subject.  Searching 'Cast Iron' on Flickr, I could soon see many photos of Cast Iron cooking utensils, bridges and other structures; what I particularly like however is the location tag and photograph information section - as a very casual photographer my self (I have a digital camera, sometimes I try and shoot in manual...), its really helpful to be able to see the settings more experienced photographers have used to take a particular shot.

Regrettably, all the cast iron photos I saw were copyrighted with all rights reserved, none the less, I investigated 'The Commons' section of Flickr. Here, I found many more photos of cast iron structures and utensils, but a great deal of these were very old! The Commons section shares photographs from historical records, and there is no copyright licence on them! In another search for Bees within The Commons I found this amazing photo of 'the worlds smallest plane (in 1948), the Wee Bee! 



I've not used Pinterest before but I have seen my friends use it. It seems really cool to have boards and pages dedicated to ideas and creations relating to your interests. If I were to make an account, it would probably consist of pages about cafe racer motorbikes, fish tanks, Lego Technic and nature stuff like birds, bugs and other interesting animals. But that's why I'm not creating an account for now. Truthfully I'm trying to cut down my time spent on social media. It is written that 'godliness with contentment is of great gain', and I think that if I were to create an account, I may spend more time thinking about what I don't have, than what I do! 

I had Instagram for a little while, and enjoyed sharing cool photos of flowers, leaves, other nature stuff that I came across during walks, or even on the university campus - it was nice for my mum to see the photos when away from home. But again, in an attempt to lessen social media time, I've put Instagram on the back-back-back burner - I now send the cool photos to mum via WhatsApp!

In addition to the media sharing platforms mentioned, others include; Google photos, Wikimedia, Commons, Photobucket, SmugMug, Shutterfly and Upsplash. The latter is particularly excellent as all of the photos are high quality and available for sharing!








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