I have been thinking about why I use Flickr as my subscription was coming up for renewal. I think we all take photos and want to share and you can only bother family so much so we look for kindred souls. I think we all want folks to express how they like our photos and strive for recognition but this can become something that prevents us for following our own paths. When I refocused on photography last year I decided to use Flickr for these goals and started following a lot of people.in this pursuit. I have since dropped 75% of this group if they are not active or do not participate.

How does one participate? Obviously viewing people's photo stream but I wonder about Flickr numbers at times. I have decided either giving comments or favoriting folks pictures is what participation for me. I should mention I do not comment often because I have never been a wordy person and sometimes words seem just a little insufficient. With this in mind I will follow folks who also think in these terms. I have decided that the second life group of folks are ok if their images make me feel something. I do this within a 60 year old brain so do not feel bad if I do not react. Some people react to viewers who do not have images uploaded and I do not really care if you are not doing this for purposes of using my images for other purposes. I like seeing the world in photos and I think these folks have a right to do so even if they are not active photographers. Hopefully I have not offended anyone.

I have decided only to review photos of folks who favor my photos since there is only so much time to do so. I also favor 3 photos to every one I get. Some folks are not as active as they might have been so I will favor 1 recent and then look at your historical photos which I find very enjoyable. Not sure how this sounds but it is what I am doing.