Beginners - Step 2 - Photos and Images

You are about to discover the wonderful world of online photo sharing. Learn the basics of websites that work to keep photos safe, organized and sharable. The following video from Common Craft shows how online photo sharing works.




You can see that there are quite a few websites that provide ways for you to organize and manage all those great pictures that you take when you travel or even from your backyard.

Discover Flickr



Photo sharing websites have been around since the 90s, but it took a small startup site called Flickr to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Within the past year, Flickr has become the fastest growing photo sharing site on the web and is known as one of the first websites to use keyword “tags” to create associations and connections between photos and users of the site.

For this discovery exercise, you are asked to take a good look at Flickr and discover what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are and all the neat things that people and other libraries are using Flickr for.

Discovery Resources:

• Flickr Learn More tour (6 steps)


• Mediamazine Flickr Tutorials


• Flickr: Popular tags


• Flickr: Interesting- Last 7 days

Flickr Services (3rd party applications & mashups) and let’s not forget to look at some other libraries on Flickr

Discovery Exercise:

In this discovery exercise, you have two options…

1) Take a good look around Flickr and discover an interesting image that you want to blog about. Be sure to include either a link to the image or, if you create a Flickr account, you can use Flickr's blogging tool to add the image in your post. Another option you have for including images in your post is to use Blogger's photo upload tool.

-- OR --

2) If you're up to an easy challenge ... create a Free account in Flickr and use your location's digital camera to capture a few pictures of something in your branch. Upload these to your Flickr account and tag at least one of the images “SPLS” and mark it public. Then create a post in your blog about your photo and experience. Be sure to include the image in your post. Once you have a Flickr account, you have two options for doing this: through Flickr's blogging tool or using Blogger's photo upload feature.

So go ahead, explore the site and have some Flickr photo fun and if you're interested in looking at some photo hosting sites, then why not check out Jamie's recommendations & this Wired story. (Thanks Jamie for the link).

PS: A quick word about photo posting etiquette - When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person's permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren't taken by you (unless you have the photographer's consent) and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.

Online Photo Editing

Did you know that Picasa, a Google product, allows you to edit your photos? Haven't tried out Picasa yet but you've been itching to?





(*NOTE: Please remember that Picasa 3 cannot be downloaded to a City PC)

You can learn how to create web albums to share with family and friends, design and print beautiful collages, and create your own video slideshow. Click here to begin the fun!


Play Around With Image Generators

Generators? No, I’m not talking about those gas powered back-up things. The generators I’m talking about allow you to easily manipulate images and graphics to create fun images like these:

For this discovery exercise, we just want you to play around. Find a few fun image or text generators to play around with and write a post in your blog about one of your favorites and display the result. Often adding the image you mocked up to your blog is as simple as copying and pasting code that the page provides. If not, you may just need to right click on the image and then save it to your hard drive before using Blogger’s image button to add it to your post.

*Note: The "blurry" effect was chosen for the movie poster to protect the hero's secret identity.



Discovery Resources:
The Generator Blog
Letter James
FD Toys

Also try searching for online generators, text generators or image generators!

Discovery Exercise:

1. Play around with some image generators and find one that you like.

2. Post the result of your discovery process in your blog.Note: Be sure to include a link to the image generator itself, so other participants can discover it too.

So take some time and have fun with this exercise. And remember to be tasteful too! Images can be created with Dummies Book Generator, FD Toys Magazine Cover, Comic Strip Generator.