Mike Munhall

Every photographer (or artist of any medium) gets into a creative rut now and then. This trick using Flickr and Flickriver is something I use to get new ideas for photographs. Even if you are not a photographer, Flickriver is a great source for fantastic photographs and I recommend, at the very least, a quick visit just to see some great photos.

First, you’ll need to know what Flickr and Flickriver are. (I’m sure that those of you living on the top side of the rock already know about Flickr): Flickr is a photo sharing website. It’s much more than that, really. But, for the purpose of this post, that’s all you need to know except that to do this trick, you need to have an account with Flickr so you can save your favorite Flickr photos for review later. Flickriver is a really cool website that taps into Flickr to fetch all of the most interesting photos posted there. The photos change each day, and each day there are hundreds of new, interesting photos to see.

Now, for the stupid trick. This trick is so simple (and so stupid) it’s almost not worth writing about it, but here it goes:

1. Go to www.flickriver.com. View the photos.
2. When you see a picture you like, click it to open the original Flickr page with the photo.
3. Hit the “Add to Faves” button. (You’ll need to be logged into Flickr to see the button.)
4. When you’re done browsing Flickriver, jump on over to Flickr and view your favorites.

See? I told you it was simple. Stupid, too. But, when in a creative rut, it’s a great way to glean ideas from great photos and get the creative juices flowing again. It works because there are so many Flickr users posting so many great photos all the time, that there will always be something that appeals to you. Flickriver consolidates all of those interesting photos in place for easy viewing.

Now, to really speed things up, you can use these keyboard shortcuts on Flickriver to move to the next or previous photo and to open the Flickr page containing the photo and the “Add to Faves” button:

• j: Next Photo
• k: Previous Photo
• v: Open Flickr

I really didn’t mean this post to be as much an advertisement for Flickriver. But, I admit, it really is a great use of the Flickr API.

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