About tags in Flickr

My mother has just set up her own Flickr site (she and my almost 8 year old nephew in Edinburgh have just set up their own blog too) and I've just been helping her get out of a little pickle.

If you intend to have slideshows on your blog you will need to take care when adding tags to your photos that you use tags that allow only your photos into the slideshow/photostream. For example, Mum and Dad have recently had a holiday to Egypt and Mum put a slideshow on her blog with the tag Egypt. She was then thoroughly miffed and frustrated when photos appeared in her slideshow that she and Dad had never taken!

When I tag my photos I use "Springwood Colquhouns" as one tag on everything then add "Springwood Colquhouns XXX" for a specific event/set of photos so they can be shown on one big slideshow or on topic-specific ones. Photos may end up with half a dozen tags. I find using an Excel spreadsheet helps me remember what I've used before.

Flickring

Again I've been uploading photos into Flickr for a little while now.

It's a great way to share photos with family without having to send multiple emails with half a dozen picture attachments. I can also use it to create slideshows on the blog I share with family - one big Springwood Colquhouns one or separate ones for different events such as holidays we've taken. And sites like Flickr allow a little bit more security for your photos as an offsite storage - won't have to worry about everything going up in a puff of smoke next fire season.

Yes I have privacy concerns, especially since I put pictures of my children up there but if you close your photos off too much some of the people you'd like to have viewing them won't be able to because they aren't very technology savvy. I figure we're obscure enough not to worry about getting lots of people looking at our photos, although did get asked to allow co to use our pics a few months back - I told them no.