tribute, ©2005 Phil Hilfiker. Some rights reserved.
The other day, as I was going through my Flickr stream (or feed, or whatever it's called these days), looking for photographs for Part One and Part Two of my story about my not-quite last day in Paris in November of 2005, I looked at comments at various photos along the way, sometimes clicking on a commenter's name to see if by some miracle they were still active on Flickr. Overwhelmingly, they more often were not. This made me sad because at one time, Flickr meant so much to so many people. Hell, had it not been for Flickr, I probably never would have gone to Paris in that fall of 2005, or ever for that matter. But one of my contacts thought so much of my photography—which I would be the first to say was not particularly special, especially in those days—to invite me to stay with her and her family. That, as I've said before, is another story for another time.
I'm not sure how I got to the photograph above, but once I did, all the joy of being on Flickr in those times came rushing back. In the event you didn't click on the photograph to see the text beneath it (you should, by the way), it was taken by my friend Phil on the first anniversary of his having created a Flickr account. His words give a little idea as to what the community was like at the time, which was tremendoously supportive and... communal.
It was also VERY playful. Memes (alas, not everybody tagged their photos for this one) were created and spread quickly around the site. An entire group was created for images built upon other people's photos, many of which would build upon another person's already Photoshop'd masterpiece. I don't know how it came to be known as Big Al Davies Collage Squad other than that maybe it had to do with Big Al's visage showing up in so many of them in the beginning.
One of mine, a favourite...
Big Al: Botanical Photographer. Some rights reserved.
I merged a photo that Al had posted of himself in his stream and Lily Pond by Catherine Jamieson. Unfortunately, because Al deleted his stream on several occasions (only to start a new one), the trail of source images can no longer be traced on many of the collages in the group.
While the hilariousness of this nonsense was addicting, it also served a purpose—for me, at least—in that it gave me an opportunity to develop my Photoshop chops. I previously had used Google's Picasa editor for my photo editing, which was a fine editor for most things I posted, but it was nowhere near as versatile as Photoshop.
Getting back to Phil's photograph, he was one of the handful of people, I think, who made up the core of the collage group, along with me, Al, Steffe, Marya (rhymes with aria), and Jeff. But it wasn't one of his collages that prompted me to write this. It was the "tribute" photographs that followed the one above; the first one by Juliette...
tribute to phil, ©2006 Juliette Melia. All rights reserved.
Then my tribute to Juliette's tribute...
Tribute to Juliette's Tribute to Phil, ©2006 Patrick T. Power. All rights reserved.
Then Sandra's tribute to my tribute to Juliette's tribute...
paparazzi me, ©2006 Sandra Löv. All rights reserved.
It doesn't look so much like a tribute, I suppose, but it was an inspired tag-on nonethless. What struck me the funniest in all this was Sandra's reference to my contribution in the silly sequence of events.
This is what I prefer when it comes to an online life—not the sharing of memes generated by "Digital Creators" on Facebook, or the animated GIF responses (something which actually appeared on Flickr and ruined many a comment thread with their presence), but connectivity fostered by creativity.
As I was trying find a photograph I could use to wrap this up, I discovered a series of photo-merges I'd created using my Icelandic friend Helga's photograph of an Icelandic sheep, Salomon, which I dubbed Salomon's Travels. As I browsed Flickr, I would imagine Salomon making an appearance in others' photographs. Once I found something, the challenge was in processing Salomon's appearance to somewhat match up with the lighting in the photograph I'd chosen to bastardize. In this one I inserted Salomon into a self-portrait by another Icelander, Arnthor Birkisson
Salomon's Dark Side (with apologies to Arnthor Birkisson and Helga Kvam).
A great many of my friends on Facebook and other social media sites are those with whom I communed on Flickr, and we so often pine for those days again because of the uniqueness of the experience, which is sometimes difficult to put into words for people who never used Flickr.
At the end of the year, however, I intend on posting my last photograph on Instagram—assuming that I continue to take at least one photograph a day between now and then—and then commencing anew at Flickr. I don't care if Instagram is the place to be for everyone else. I've decided that it's not for me.
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