Fotolog and Flickr

[imomus]

I now have an account with Fotolog and an account with Flickr. Basically, they do the same thing: host and display my digital photographs. Does anyone have experience of both these systems? Which do you prefer? What are the pros and cons of each?



At first sight, Flickr has the cleaner interface, although I like Fotolog's world map. I get the feeling that I'll reach my bandwidth limit on Flickr pretty quickly too. And I'm curious about the social networking aspects of both systems. What are your experiences? Are there other photoblog publishing systems you recommend?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Re. the Thames & Hudson book. While any book by Momus will be greeted enthusiastically by me, I'm a bit aghast that you don't already know and participate in the two most active photoblogging communities! Strange that they wouldn't pick someone with a more long-standing relationship to the community action, if you will. That said, I recognize you've been a longstanding photologger yourself at iMomus and I adore your photo collages. Actually, I wish you'd do more of those.

I started on Fotolog in ~2002 and switched to Flickr this year. I liked Fotolog, but yes it crashed all the time and it was relatively simple. However, there was (and maybe still is) a very vibrant community of Fotolog users. Like Flickr (and prior to Flickr) there were Fotolog communities devoted to images of things: cars, books, etc. There were (and maybe still are) regular Fotolog meetups in NYC/Brooklyn. As a starting point, go to Laura Holder's Fotolog (http://www.fotolog.net/lauratitian) and then visit all her friends & favorites. You should also know of art gallery exhibits of fotologer's work at jen bekman and the talks at the Apple Soho store. Also, strangely, there's a big fotolog userbase in Brazil.

I heard about Flickr very early b/c I'd been longtime regular reader of Catarina Fake's blog. You should check out all her blogs, including her Flickr blog where she does excellent evangelism for the site. I was a bit hesitant to use Flickr at first because I find it's interface, while technically slick, to be a bit crowded and chunky looking. I hate how you have to title all your photos and how big the title is. Ideally I'd like to display only a large image and a caption in small font below. There are ways to do this using server-side software--always a bit complex for a tech novice like me. Anyway, I use Flickr b/c of the tags, and the slideshows, and the "badges" of current images that you can have on your blog.

When I'm back at my regular PC with all my bookmarks I can give you a big list of photobloggers. But for now, check out my favorite: http://www.satanslaundromat.com/sl/.

What are your favorite photologs?

Tim in NYC

[imomus.livejournal.com]

My favourite is by a man clever enough to program his own interface, Jip de Kort (http://www.kwark.org/Gfx/2005/2005Week09.html).

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Kaori Mizushima, who also has a custom interface, her one day journal (http://www.monminouweb.com/onedj.html).