Assignment 6

Theme: Live Musicians

Link to Gallery: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alisoneakin/galleries/72157624561293032/

Username: alison195

Gallery: Musicians

I chose to create a gallery featuring photos of some of my favorite musicians performing live. Music has always been extremely important to me. I began playing piano at a young age and took up guitar when I was a teenager. Although I am not a naturally talented musician and I really can not hold a note while singing, I have always been an avid music fan. Music has the ability to alter my mood, to evoke strong emotions, and to make me feel alive. I love music with strong lyrics and beautiful melodies and I am drawn to bands and musicians that are not so hugely popular that they can still play small, intimate venues.

My intention was to feature live images that displayed a sort of connection, either between musician and audience or between members of a band. A few photos I chose simply because I picked up on the musician’s meditation and sentiment. I also concentrated my search on black and white photos for purely aesthetic purposes. I simply like the way they look! None of the photos I chose are mine (I’m not much of a photographer, especially while at a concert). I limited my search to bands that are currently active, due to the availability of recent digital photos. I also like a lot of classic rock but figured photos of inactive bands would be more difficult to come by.

My search process was basically the same for each photo. I first made a list of bands/musicians that I have been listening to a lot lately. I tried to select bands that I feel a connection to, whether through a song or an experience. I typed the name of the artist in the search bar. If the results did not feature many live shots, I added the word “live” after the musician’s name. I searched through both “relevant” and “interesting” photos until I found a black and white photo that met my qualifications. If I had trouble sorting through photos, I sometimes looked through the group galleries that I noticed on the right hand side of the page. I found all the photos I was looking for with relative ease. Some I came by quicker than others, but nothing was impossible to find.

I had very positive impressions of Flikr. I had never used the site much before this class. I was impressed with the volume of photos available, even of some of the more obscure musicians I searched for. I found that searching was very easy and I liked that you could chose between “relevant”, “recent”, and “interesting”. I am not exactly sure how they determine whether something is interesting, but I was very impressed with the quality of images found in that category. Adding images to my gallery was simple and instinctive. I also liked how simple it was to rearrange the sequence of photos in my gallery. One thing I did not like was the limit to the number of photos allowed in my gallery. I was cut off at eighteen and had to leave out two of the images I had on my original list of twenty. Eighteen is kind of an arbitrary number and although I understand why they might want to limit the number of photos per gallery, I think they should allow for a few more.

Generally, I really enjoyed using Flikr and found it easy and fun to put together my gallery. I think that I will continue to use my Flikr account to organize some of my favorite photos that I have taken over the years.