Flickr, Further

I have always used Photoshop to edit my photos, because I have an old oooooold version from when I was in college. I don't really know what I'm doing, though, so it's always a bit tough. One of my fellow librarians has been talking about how much fun Picasa is for a while, but I still haven't really played around with it. But recently Picasa and flickr joined forces - and now you can edit your photos with Picasa right from your flickr page! How cool.

So here's a photo I took last week of the magnolia tree in our little courtyard:



I wanted to brighten it up, because it was such a gray day when I took this. So here's some of Picasa's magic:



And THEN I went a little crazy with the effects:



This is definitely a lot of fun... and it's way easier (and faster) than using Photoshop. We may have a convert here.

Hooray! Flickr!

I have been a big fan of flickr ever since I discovered it last year. Photography is one of my favorite hobbies, and I love that flickr enables me to share my photos with my family, my friends, and people I don't even know.

I waste a lot of time surfing through the tags on flickr. Like today, I was thinking again about how I'd like to buy a new lens for my camera. As I sat down to write this post, I thought, hey, flickr might be able to help me with that. So I searched the tags for the specific lens, and came up with this beautiful photo of a flower. Am I convinced that I want that macro lens? TOTALLY. But this is a good example of how flickr can connect people - whether your hobby is actually photography, or knitting, or gardening, you can find photos on flickr.

But even more, flickr is helping librarians keep up with each other. Libraries are starting to post photos of their events on flickr, and so other libraries can see how a teen zone could be decorated, or even just how cool the Seattle Public Library's building is.

So yeah. I like flickr. Here are some of the photos I took last week of the beginnings of spring in my branch: