Fast Fiction

So I reached my 100th photo on Flickr last week.

I didn’t realize it at first but then noticed that some of my most favorite (and most favorited) photos dropped off. Okay, it was only two of them, I haven’t uploaded anything since. I was debating what to do.

Here’s the thing. I have my own site and hosting (no, I’ve not moved this blog yet, but I will one these days). So I have no problem with file storage. I like the community and want to stay a part of it.

But I don’t want to lose the ability to find and share those photos. There are always new groups to share with. I didn’t even find the ultra cool squared circle until someone commented on one of my photos last week.

So I figured a couple of workarounds (I hesitate to call them hacks) for the 100 visible files and 3 set limit.

Flickr allows anyone to create a group. There are three different kinds of groups.

Private - only members can see it and the only way to become a member is to be invited.

Public invitation only - everyone can see it but only those invited and approved by the admin can join.

Public - anyone can see, everyone can join.

You can use these groups, specifically the private and public/invitation groups to create either an archive or additional sets. If you use the private function, only you can use it, but it’s still plenty handy. You can go into this group after you’ve shared files with it and access all the functions there, like sharing it with another group or adding new tags.

What I’ve done is created a group for myself (Pubic-invitation) and put my 10 oldest photos (so far) in there. I’ve taken a thumbnail of one of the photos and placed it in my profile on Flickr and linked to that group as my archive set.

You can do the same by creating groups where you share in specific set oriented photos and then doing the same thumbnail linking in your profile. May as well create thumbnails for your basic offered sets and it’ll look seamless.

I’m sure someone else has thought of this before, but I was pretty proud of myself and wanted to share it with everyone else.