Finding What You Want from Flickr

April 24, 2009 | By David Stanley | Creative

The Flickr Collection on Getty Images
85456529 Kate Brady/Getty Images

We built the licensing platform and with your cutting-edge imagery, together we’ve created an extraordinary collection…and it keeps getting bigger! We now have more than 15,000 images from photographers in over 80 countries in the Flickr Collection on Getty Images.

While we continue to look through Flickr‘s two billion images, it’s important for you to let us know what you think.

Are you finding what you need?

Is there a picture on Flickr that you wish was in the collection but isn’t in there yet?

What do you wish there was more of?

Don’t hold back. Be honest, be vocal, and we’ll be grateful. Leave your comments here today.

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  • Chris Donovan

    Tourist buildings seen in an unusual way. And maybe regular people doing regular things. Cheers.

  • http://reality2.com Jorge Alonso

    I went on the Flickr section (from your HTML email) entered a word to try it and it seemed to take me to your regular collection, I even found an image I had recently used, and there is no reference to Flickr at that point. What am I missing?

  • http://evermoreok.com Ben Allen

    I have photos on flickr under http://www.flickr.com/photos/evermorephotography/

    I am curious though, how are the photographers on flickr paid or are they?

    Ben

  • http://fobes.net jon fobes

    I am a photo editor at a major newspaper and take lots of floral photos that are almost never offered for publication. I have more than 100,000 hits on my Flickr site, and two of my photos have well over 10,000 views. I would, of course, love to have photos in the Getty database. My photos are at flickr.com/photos/jonfobes.

  • publisher

    Is so sad to see images in the famous getty website which used to host the best exclusive images hosting now images from Flickr so called photographers that they have been offering also the same images to micro stock agencies for 1 poor dollar. and no exclusivity.

    Sadly the truth

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/vanarts vanarts

    I wonder what criteria Getty Images has for images in Flickrverse. How do you dig that huge pool of photos and know how far you’ve gone?

  • Annette Goode

    Would love to see more African-American, and other people of color, ethnicity photographs.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/jennvirskus/ Jenn

    Wow… Getty you do it again! What a genius move! There are so many extremely talented amature photographers on Flickr… and now you are going looking for them!

    I’m a photo editor at a major magazine, and often go looking to Flickr photographers for photos (we clear rights of course!). I’m glad to see some of them will finally get the recognition and financial compensation they deserve… though it will make it more expensive for me! Good job!

  • http://gettyimages.com David Stanley

    Thanks for the feedback Chris, we’ll pass it on to our editors. One of the things we are definitely looking for is more regional imagery from around the world. Any particular places you are finding lacking the kind of images you need? And ‘regular people’ is one of the things we’re loving about the images we’re finding on Flickr – most are not shot with models for ‘stock’ but are families, friends: ‘real people’.

  • http://gettyimages.com David Stanley

    Ben and Jon – thanks for pointing us to your photostreams. We’re very happy that you’re interested and will definitely pass them along to our editors. Photographers who are part of the Flickr Collection on Getty Images are paid commissions on their sales in the same way other Getty Images contributors are.

  • http://gettyimages.com David Stanley

    Publisher: happily, not the truth. Since our editors have been searching through Flickr the past few months we have been amazed at the quality and creativity of the photographers we have found there and we are very happy to represent them (on an image exclusive basis) on gettyimages.com alongside our other collections and partners. And our customers have been very enthusiastic in their response to the collection, including licensing many images already.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/solo2006/ solo

    Hi.

    How can you search the flickr database ?, as flickr user, should we use specifics tags on our photostreams, or you are just looking with the interestingness flickr feature ?

    How you tag the photos after ? DO you put them your own keywords for your search engine ?

    That’s a great move for getty, btw.

    Thanks.

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/solo2006/ solo

    And another question, about people rights in the flickr image.

    A lot of shoots in the flickr database, are personal shooting, with people involved in the shooting not selling their image rights for commercial purpose.

    Here is an exemple from my photostream :
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/solo2006/sets/72157617265105897/

    How you can manage rights for the model, or maybe you never select shoots like these ?

    I am having this question because i’m AD in an advertising agency, and i have this debate with my Creative director about the choice of flickr as source image for an advertising campaign.

  • http://www.cristiangalletti.com cris

    Why Getty Images don’t open a Flickr Group where we can send and submit our shots? I would submit mine to you http://www.flickr.com/photos/cristiangalletti

  • Erin

    I’m curious: how do you search Flickr? It must be enormous. Are you actually going through every single photostream, or just taking what Flickr have already set aside as their best? I have a Flickr account also, and of course, would love to have my pics included in your “best of Flickr” set. Apart from just taking outstanding images, is there any other way to put your hand up for your own pics to be considered? THanks!

  • Publisher

    Hello David,

    You call quality when the most of the images are shot by cheap cameras and images are getting interpolated 200%. Surely was response from clients in the beginning because those images are cheap but will end soon as I buy images from micro agencies as the same images used and still are featured in those sites. Creativity in images means also images with people and with model releases, where are those images and on what file sizes without interpolation. sometimes we print in high quality paper more than 300 dpi.
    My advice is stay with the high quality RM collections as many agencies start to realize that soon the recesion will be over and as customers we will want the best and not the rest.

  • http://davidvalera.com/ David

    Awesome. Love the new interesting format to browse images. Thank you for including many of my images from my flickr photostream.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/de_val/

  • http://sholatsolusi.blogspot.com/ herry

    I try to search option on my flicker account to point on getty images jury, but not find, or I miss some thing on my option, my photostraeam on flicker is http://www.flickr.com/photos/39420261@N04/
    thanks

  • http://www.flickr.com/photos/francisco_osorio/ Francisco Osorio

    This is a great idea. Amateurs today have almost the same equipment and skills of professional photographers, so the line is getting thinner. I do respect and admire the professionals, but we are doing also a serious job for the love of photography.
    Let me suggest my site for you to consider http://www.flickr.com/photos/francisco_osorio/

  • Jati

    I have photos under http://www.flickr.com/photos/adityahidayatjati/

    How can I submit mine to you?

  • http://www.gettyimages.com/flickr Tom W at Getty Images

    Hi David, Herry, Francisco, and Jati –

    Thanks a lot for your support and positive comments, and for your enthusiasm in wanting to participate in the Flickr collection. We’ll be sure to pass along the links to your photostreams to the editors and hopefully they will select some of your images and invite those that fit into the needs of the collection.

  • http://flickr.com/angelsarah Sarah

    I am just smiling reading all the commentary and thought I’d put my two cents in and say….

    Flickr.com/angelsarah

    Amature photographer.