Assignment #6

I had not previously used Flickr before this course, so when I began this assignment I had little idea what to expect. I believe that I imagined a larger version of the facebook photo album application. I had no idea that Flickr had such an extensive collection of photos that were searchable! I didn't realize the many ways that photos could be organized, or the existence of photo “groups” devoted to a specific theme. I was pleasantly surprised to find such a vibrant community behind what I saw as a basic photo sharing site.

I picked the theme “Hamsters” because they happen to be the only pets my family has ever had. (Thus far, eight in all). I was curious to discover what Flickr had for what I considered to be a rather obscure pet. As it turns out, I was incorrect. Typing the search query “hamster” onto Flickr returned exactly 128,377 results. It seems that many, many people have a hamster as a beloved pet. Not only that, but there are several groups devoted to hamsters, hamster cages, and hamsters in unusual places. I had more search results than I knew what to do with, and I could only fit 18 photos into my gallery.

I began to comb through the search results, marveling at how many international users I came across. As the content that I was initially looking for was “pictures with hamsters in them”, I had to refine my criteria. The photos that made the cut were a) deemed by myself to be exceedingly cute and b) clever or unusual in some way. Thus, the photo-shopped hamster pirate was included with the hamster eating a pepper.

I was very pleased with my results from Flickr, finding pictures of hamsters from Japan to Poland. It appears that hamsters are a very popular pet on the internet, as there seems to be a diverse group of hamster owners posting on Flickr. I found the gallery tool to be easy to use, collecting a group of photographs from many users on Flickr. In general, I found it to be a very user friendly tool that has a vast network of search results to call upon.

My gallery is called Access 60001 Summer II, and my user ID is rachel_fichter@sbcglobal.net