About a month ago, I highlighted the situation of a Flickr user Matt Stigliano, whose account was permanently deleted without warning. At that time, I decided to rethink my use of Flickr and whether or not it was a wise choice for a professional photographer to publish work on a service that engages in such actions.
The last upload to my Flickr account was a photo of Portland’s Liberty Centre over a month ago. Since then I’ve uploaded a few photos in other places but have been thinking a lot about Flickr. My conclusion: I can’t afford to not be using Flickr.
As a photographer, my focus is events, often within the tech community. Flickr is the perfect site for showing my work and gaining exposure to my network and potential clients, and attempting to be a tech event photographer without using Flickr is a hard sell. Yes, I could use other websites to display my work but that work won’t be seen my the Flickr community. After consideration, the business marketing and exposure of actively using Flickr outweighs the potential impact of sudden drastic action on the part of Flickr’s staff.
What do you think? Am I on the right track? Have you altered your use of Flickr since their account deletions have come to light?
