“You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.”

December 7, 2017 1:54 PM

Flickr's Top 25 Photos of 2017.

Background
FastCompany:

Venerable photo-sharing hub Flickr (still part of Yahoo, now part of Oath, which rolls up into Verizon) has rounded up its users’ top 25 photos of 2017. In this case, the “top” honorific starts with metrics about how often an image was viewed, shared, and favorited. But human beings at Flickr did the final pass based on their own aesthetic judgment.

The raw numbers about devices used by Flickr’s community reflect the impact of the smartphone revolution: 54% of all photographers use an iPhone, with traditional cameras manufactured by Canon and Nikon next in line at 23% and 18%, respectively. I’m struck, however, by the fact that all of the top 25 images were taken with a conventional camera rather than a phone. Usually a pro-level model such as Canon’s EOS 5D Mark III (an SLR) or Sony’s Alpha a7 II (a mirrorless camera).

Top Photos of 2017, by Category
These galleries each contain different photo collections than the one linked above.

* All Galleries

* Architecture
* Auto
* Black and White and Monochrome
* Fine Art
* Food
* Landscapes
* Macro
* Nature and Wildlife
* Photos from Brazil
* Photos from Canada
* Photos from France
* Photos from Germany
* Photos from Hong Kong
* Photos from India
* Photos from Taiwan
* Photos from the U.K.
* Photos from the U.S.
* Portrait Photography
* Sports
* Street

posted by zarq (30 comments total)

It's possible that more Top 2017 galleries will be posted to this page throughout the month....
posted by zarq at 1:55 PM on December 7, 2017

Stunning.
posted by DrAstroZoom at 1:57 PM on December 7, 2017

OMG THAT OWL
posted by magstheaxe at 1:59 PM on December 7, 2017 [4 favorites]

Dear Canadians: you have many beautiful lakes. Moraine Lake is very nice, but next year mix it up a bit, please..
posted by Nerd of the North at 2:33 PM on December 7, 2017

These are beautiful but I admit that I find them less ... wow? than before Photoshop etc became mainstream. I don't know enough about photography to be able to tell if these have been manipulated (or 'enhanced' if you prefer) but I assume they have. Still gorgeous but less real.
posted by twilightlost at 2:58 PM on December 7, 2017 [11 favorites]

twilight ghost, most of these photos have indeed been worked very hard in photoshop. I don't think there's anything wrong with that per se, but it can sometimes lend pics a kind of glossy, homogenous quality. I think the sub galleries linked above actually contain stronger pics than the over all top ones.
posted by smoke at 3:15 PM on December 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

The staircase shot would make a great cover pic for Anathem.
posted by biffa at 3:29 PM on December 7, 2017 [5 favorites]

* Photos from Brazil
* Photos from Canada
* Photos from France
* Photos from Germany
* Photos from Hong Kong
* Photos from India
* Photos from Taiwan
* Photos from the U.K.
* Photos from the U.S.

South America, North America, Europe, Asia. Did they (flickr) really leave out an entire continent like it's not part of the planet? I looked through a bunch of their galleries and ... maybe I missed it?
posted by cashman at 3:31 PM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think the sub galleries linked above actually contain stronger pics than the over all top ones.

I completely agree. That's actually why I linked to each of them directly, rather than just tossing up a link to the Galleries page. They're much better than the main link, imo.

My favorites are the 'photos from ____ country.' The often look more realistic and artistic, yet less artificial.
posted by zarq at 3:31 PM on December 7, 2017 [2 favorites]

The overall top ones had a heavy Kinkade-ish sentiment to them, I thought. The times, I guess.
posted by bonobothegreat at 4:12 PM on December 7, 2017 [6 favorites]

Ugh. I kind of hate all of these (except maybe the owl). They're all just so processed and sterile and mostly without any kind of narrative to make you care why they were taken.
posted by octothorpe at 4:28 PM on December 7, 2017 [11 favorites]

I agree with your thoughts, instagram is overrun with these glossy nature and city photos and i've found myself unfollowing many accounts that are just full of them. I don't mind those scenes, but I find the overly photoshopped ones unnatural.

(still part of Yahoo, now part of Oath, which rolls up into Verizon)

I forgot that Yahoo is basically Verizon now. But I'm glad for all of the changing hands, Flickr's development has been largely left alone. Even the mobile app has been improving in the past year. This is also reminding me that I've been very neglectful of organizing my massive camera roll into proper albums.
posted by numaner at 4:44 PM on December 7, 2017

Yeesh. I'll say it again. YEEEEESH. This is some Thomas Kinkade-level kitsch. Sorry to be a grump but that is my visceral response to the Top 25.
posted by misterbee at 5:14 PM on December 7, 2017 [10 favorites]

I was surprised by how many of the shots (9 by my count) here were taken using an ultrawide-angle lens
posted by kcds at 5:45 PM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I had the same response, that the top 25 must have been picked by the same person (who has Kinkade all over hir living room).
posted by Dashy at 6:45 PM on December 7, 2017

Every photo in this collection, and I mean EVERY ONE, feels like a commercial for itself.
posted by jettloe at 7:21 PM on December 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

The overall top ones had a heavy Kinkade-ish sentiment to them, I thought. The times, I guess.

They remind me a lot of the photo of the week from the old photo.net (there's a company that was so well positioned to be what flickr is now but just never made it). That is, cliche and predictable photos with great technical achievement but utterly derivative and unimaginative. But that's just my own curmudgeonly take, I guess.
posted by dis_integration at 8:50 PM on December 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

Although that baby elephant photo is great. Who doesn't love elephants.
posted by dis_integration at 8:53 PM on December 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is it my eye or is that winter castle tipping to the right?

Thanks for the tip to the country galleries. The Top 25, all of the landscape shots just aren't doing much (I do like several of the animals and would put them on my Bing background).

(Mont Saint-Michel reflected in water? Who knew it could reflect in water!)
posted by away for regrooving at 12:32 AM on December 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

There seems to be an awful lot of colour adjustjment and post-processing going on in some of these. I'd rather just see the natural light shot please.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:42 AM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

Yeah, most of them rub me the wrong way (too polished, too Kinkade-ish, rehashes of other, popular motifs, etc).

To my eye, the Stairway to Heaven is the best of them.
posted by flippant at 1:49 AM on December 8, 2017

Definitely lots of cheese, but I’m sure some took a lot of work. Wish there was a way to never see the titles of any of them.
posted by snofoam at 4:20 AM on December 8, 2017

I keep forgetting Flickr is still around. I use it as an Instagram backup on the assumption it's going under at any moment but there it is, still hanging in there.
posted by tommasz at 6:27 AM on December 8, 2017

The HDR Hole is real!
posted by DigDoug at 6:48 AM on December 8, 2017 [5 favorites]

> I keep forgetting Flickr is still around.

And I just learned from this very thread that it now has a mobile app? Is it any good? (If 54% of the photos are shot on iPhones ...)

What a tremendous waste of potential Flickr was - relegated to irrelevance by failures of management and imagination, the Sears catalog in an age of Amazon. It's nice to see that they're still plugging away though, and that serious photographers are still using it.
posted by RedOrGreen at 9:00 AM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

HDR can be a real tool for dealing with shots that have a larger dynamic range than your camera's sensor can handle with any single iso/shutter speed/aperture setting combination but it's so easily abused.
posted by octothorpe at 10:05 AM on December 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

RedOrGreen: yes, the mobile app is great.
posted by foldedfish at 10:52 AM on December 8, 2017

Brown Bear in Shadow from the Nature and Wildlife set.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 11:08 AM on December 8, 2017

The landscape ones look like generic OSX backgrounds.
posted by aspersioncast at 2:02 PM on December 10, 2017

I'll be sad when Flickr goes away, nothing else out there lets you shove all your full-size originals on and then let you curate and organize all your stuff to exactly how you want to present yourself as a photographer. I'm not at all a proper one, but I like all the features they have on their site for my organizational nerdgasms. They allow videos now too, but it's limited to 3 minutes, 1 GB in size, and 1080p, but that's plenty for most cat videos anyway. (I have quite a few concert videos but that's what Youtube is for)

And I just learned from this very thread that it now has a mobile app? Is it any good? (If 54% of the photos are shot on iPhones ...)

It's decent if you just need to upload things to your account, make albums, and browse accounts you follow. Everything else is slightly slower than the full site, and it can crash when you're changing things on a lot of photos, like setting a bunch of things from private to public, deleting them, etc. Although with the latest updates it hasn't been crashing at all on my Pixel. But if you like to have an easy way to back up stuff to your pro account (which has unlimited storage now), just set the auto-uploadr (yes, that's what it's called, obvs) to on and you just have to occasionally check your stuff and turn what you want to public, since it automatically uploads as private (as it should) and you can't change that.

The built-in Aviary editor is alright, but it lacks some of the precision that Snapseed has. Although it have those "fun" stickers and stuff that I dunno who the target audience is for. And admittedly, Snapseed just plain do not give you a paintbrush to block out stuff like license plates.

If there's ever a day that Google and YahooVerizon combine Snapseed, Aviary and Flickr together I will pay so much money to just use that and nothing else for my photography needs.
posted by numaner at 5:23 PM on December 12, 2017 [1 favorite]