The local Flickr user community in Ann Arbor has been a wonderful part of the last year I’ve spent here. Besides the obvious benefits of friendship and expertise networks, I’ve really rediscovered the joy of photography as a result of association with other photo geeks exploring the social life of photographers.
The Ann Arbor Flickr group numbers just under 400 members at the time of writing, and the Ann Arbor Area Crappy Camera Club is a near subset, comprised of just under 50 fans of lo-fi photography from the broader Southeast Michigan area. While the Ann Arbor group itself is pretty active, with constant discussion online about local photo-related events and monthly offline meetups at local watering holes, the A3C3 is something else again.
The A3C3 group is not comprised solely of Flickrers but includes some other lo-fi photo fans from the greater A2 area. In the last year, we have put together a gallery show, “Cheap Shots: Silver Dreams of Plastic Cameras,” presented several workshops to the public, and held meetups in Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti every month. At meetups, we geek out over primitive cameras of all flavors, from vintage box cameras to homemade pinhole cameras and plenty of pieces of plastic crap.
The group is a supportive community of friendly enthusiasts from all walks of life, and the online community on Flickr really facilitates the development of the offline community. The discussion boards allow easy asynchronous event coordination and speeds the diffusion of information about photo-worthy or photo-related events. So why does Flickr work better than a regular forum? My hypotheses:
- We’re already going to Flickr to post our photos.
- We all know that posting our photos to a well targeted group will increase its views. Any perpetual Flickrer wants more views, even if they deny it. Deep down, we all want views and interestingness, or we wouldn’t post publicly.
- There’s face validity in the offline A3C3 group to be gained for keeping tabs on the work of others. You have more to talk about at meetups if you have a vague idea of what the other folks are about.
- These people are really passionate about lo-fi photography. Naturally, they want to display their work in an open forum, and this is one of the most cost effective ways to reach the most eyes. In a little over a year, I’ve had over 50,000 views of photos by people other than me, with an average of 17.7 views per photo. For better or worse, that’s a lot more traffic than my hard copy photo albums ever got, and far cheaper than putting up a single photo in a gallery show.
The Flickrers in Ann Arbor are wonderful friends. Spending time with them at “official” meetups and other informal gatherings proved a positive distraction from the all-consuming influence of graduate school. While I will sorely miss being able to attend future A2 Flickr meetups, I will not miss out entirely because I can always view the group through its own lens.