February
2007
Flickrmeets
If by any chance you have been checking out my photo pages here, you’ll have seen some manic activity on those pages for sometime now. I appear to have fallen in love with a photo sharing community site called flickr, which has become a very social place to be.
First Black Country Flickrmeet
Sunday just gone was the first Black Country Flickrmeet, which I organised and drummed up membership for, I was truly astonished by the number of people who had been brought together, by the flickr site and our interactions within the various groups, to walk my route around Walsall taking random photos. The day was a successes and not only showed the ability of a social network to arrange such an event but the idea of democracy carries through as members are encouraged to add their own ideas for meetings and the whole thing kinda works in a nice way.
Here are just some of my own photos from the day, which you can view more of on this page, but you’ll find a lot more in the flickr group
Don’t forget to check out the actual black country group on flickr for more.
At first flickr appeared just to be a site for uploading and hosting photos, but because of the social aspects it became much more than that. I was soon joining groups left, right and center partly to gain an audience for comments on my own photos, which at the time were event based, but also to discover other works to be inspired by them and as a by product of that I gained contacts and a social network.
Social documentation through photography
The most surprising thing I got from flickr was the sense of community, feedback and belonging. Not only was it a place to be inspired, pick up new tricks and figure out why shutter priority matters so much, it’s just a great place to hang out in. The great city of Birmingham is home to a vibrant photographic community and some members of the Birmingham group, like Pete Ashton, spun off a meetup group where members could arrange to meet and have a wander around the city centre, taking photos in a group, giving a sense of belonging as well as being able to document the city as it changes. The meets are almost like social documenting.
Inspired by this I decided to help set up a similar thing for the surrounding area to the North West of Birmingham known as the Black Country, all of my higher and further education was carried out in the Black Country and I’m fond of the area as much as I am of Birmingham.
So yeah, much more than just photos.
