Shawn P. Calhoun

Green Media and Flickr @usfca

Hello #greenmedia,

Y’all should know me by now as @gleesonlibrary. If you check my bio on the library twitter account you’ll see I’m also known of as @shawncalhoun.  I’ve done my best to follow each of you on Twitter from @gleesonlibrary – if somehow I missed you please tweet me so I can keep up.

Some of you have probably seen me starting to popup on your Flickr accounts as well. In addition to loving what y’all are doing in #greenmedia, I’m sort of a photography nut.  You can find me on Flickr as shawncalhoun. Don’t worry you don’t have to follow me there if you don’t want to.  But know that I’m very much inspired by the photos y’all have posted so far and am excited to see what’s next.

As I’m sure you’re learning in #greenmedia, how you are perceived on social media is important. So, in that context, a quick primer on licensing your photos on Flickr.  

The default license on Flickr is the big fat © All Rights Reserved. If you license your work that way no one else should, for any reason you don’t expressly allow, use your photos. Now, that’s not that big of a deal for many folks, but there are more important issues. The short version is that All Rights Reserved tells the world you’re OK with folks looking at your work, but you are also saying that you probably don’t want to share. Remember, sharing is caring. 

So, I encourage you to consider a Creative Commons License for you photos. Creative Commons licensing allows you to retain ownership, but tells the world they are free to share/remix your work. I for one think that’s very cool. 

You can learn more about Creative Commons licensing of your Flickr photos here and how to update your default license. 

If you have time, I encourage you to take a look at the Creative Commons website. Its all that and fries. 

Thanks for listening and see you around. Look for another update from me soon where I’ll talk about the USF Photography Pool on Flickr. Or even better, maybe one of you wants to SCHOOL ME about it?!?!