Missing Flickr Features

9 Sep, 2007 | Art & PhotographyWebTdp

I wouldn't say I'm an amateur photographer, I have a couple of cameras, one of which is comfortably above your typical point-and-shoot and I think about my pictures a bit more than most, so I seem to get some praise for them, but I don't avidly go out looking for shots. Anyway, recently it was my brother's wedding, so obviously I had both cameras with me (and a video camera) and uploaded the results to my Flickr account. That's when the problems started.

I generally mark photos of family events for friends/family viewing only, I'm not keen on showing the world snaps of our events. The problem with this is that someone has to login to view the images. I have done this before, so friends and family do have accounts, but six months down the line they've forgotten their usernames and passwords (and now they have to setup a Yahoo! account too). In the end we setup a single account and emailed out details.

The next problem was that the wedding photographer was offering the ability to buy prints from the site she loaded the photos up to. The problem was a) some of the photos weren't that good and, b) they wanted £5 for a standard 6"x4" photo! Compare that to a normal printing service, like PhotoBox, where they cost 10p per print. So, what people would like to do is buy prints of my images, which were good enough as far as they were concerned. Unfortunately, Flickr only has integrated print ordering in the US (as has for some time), they seem to dragging their heels getting it sorted in the UK/Europe. So, if someone wants to buy one of my photos as a print, they have to login to Flickr, download the image, upload to PhotoBox and then buy it. Seems a little long winded. I could setup a professional gallery at PhotoBox, but it involves loading images in two locations.

So, Flickr, get your arse in gear with two features:


  1. Secure URLs, so I can give out a URL for either my full account or for specific sets which are pre-validated for specific groups of users (friends, family, etc).


  2. Get integrated print ordering working for Europe.




Thanks