Tutorial Six

PHOTOGRAPHY

Flickr
Flickr is an easy accessible tool that allows people to share and view photographs and videos of their choice. The flickr service has two main goals. They want to help people from all over the world, make their photos available to those who are important to them. Secondly, flickr has been created to allow a new way that photos and videos can be organised. I have been interested in flickr for quite a while, but have only recently created a flickr account. It is simple to use, and amazing to see talent of photographers and beauty of images from all areas of the world. As flickr is very popular, privacy regulations have been put in place. As an account holder you can choose who views you photos, easily update or delete photos, and default privacy settings/details about yourself and your photos. Flickr also has the right to terminate a users account if they breach copyright policies. This ensures that photos that are viewed are unique and therefore hold more value for the creator and viewer.

http://www.flickr.com/

Blog
A blog that I religiously follow is Bleubird Vintage. I found this blog after becoming quite interested in this bloggers clothing range. Although this blog is quite a personal blog I am also interested to see what interesting photographs she puts up next. The photos are what attracted me to this blog and are defiantly the reason I keep returning and carrying out my love of photography. As the saying goes "a picture tells a thousand words". This blog allows me to keep up to date with my interests and provides me with a different perspective - not just from this blogger, but also from bloggers that post comments. Comment spaces on blogs allow the viewers to state their opinion and also connect viewers to their own or other blogs that they ma be interested.

PhotoTherapy discussion group
I have just discovered this discussion group online. It is a very interesting as it focuses on using phototherapy with a range of clients seeking occupational therapy intervention, including Anorexia Nervosa clients. Photo therapy can be used in many ways for a range of situations, but the main focus of it is to prove active change through photography. These photos can be of the client, others that important to them, the environment around them or randomly taken. In this discussion the author, Ellen Lamberg focuses on clients taking self portraits to reach a deeper emotional level in the client. This resulted in them positively seeing change, sharing thoughts and dealing with their concerns. I found this a very interesting topic as it involved my two key interests of Occupational Therapy and photography. Others can leave comments on this discussion and many have left interesting points. This is defiantly something that i will defiantly be interested in in the future.

The three above examples of online communities can be very interesting and educational if used correctly. All three communities require those who wish to leave comments or create topics of discussion to sign up to some form of account. This often requires personal information. It is possible that this information can be seen by others using the online service or those seeking information that will most likely be used inappropriately.  This raises ethical issues and emphasises the care that needs to be taken when sharing information online. However there is also the case of not sharing personal information which can lead to other issues. As some comments that are left on online communities are not always positive, it is harder to find out who these comments belong to, therefore making it hard for the author/creator to ban them from the social service. Those that do use the online communities correctly benefit in many areas that may include for educational, social and trialling purposes.