Friday Finds: Boats & Introduction

Happy Friday everyone! This week’s photographic theme was Boats, suggested by Flickr member, …-Wink-…. Please enjoy the photographs selected to highlight these submissions throughout this entry. There are 18 highlighted images in all, found in my Friday Finds: Boats Gallery. All submissions to the Flickr group for this theme can be viewed under the tag dwcff-boats and you can also look through all 67 at the bottom of this post.

Normally Friday Finds would contain my favorite photography and photo editing links found throughout the week, but now that the photographic challenge is gaining more and more exceptional participants, I’d like to take a moment and explain fully what I’m doing with the challenge, why I started it and the process I go through each week to round up a collection of themed shots submitted by photographers all over the world.

If you’re a blogger who’d like to incorporate more images in your blog or you’re searching for another stock photography solution, I think you’ll be interested in my process so I published a separate article for you: Find Photos for your Blog in 6 Easy Steps. All of the photos selected for Friday Finds are licensed to allow me to display them on my blog, with credit to the photographer. This means you’d be free to use the same images on your blog as long as you credit.

How it Started

On Friday, May 21, I published, This Week in Surfing. My goal was to share the articles I enjoyed most throughout the week, to give other blogs some recognition and traffic.

After two weeks, I decided I wanted to try gathering a collection by searching Creative Commons licensed photographs on Flickr. My first theme was Cemeteries simply because that was the theme at the Digital Photography School forums that week and I knew I’d never get out to a cemetery to get the shot. I figured studying others’ cemetery shots was the next best thing.

I continued putting together weekly galleries after that. I really enjoy the process of being a photo editor in that sense. I knew with that first collection I’d want to open submissions to highlight a larger number of photographs since Flickr Galleries can only hold 18.

I toyed with the idea of doing a Linky and allowing others to submit their photographs directly on my site, but I still wanted to be able to highlight these photos via a Flickr gallery, which would require the photographs to be uploaded to Flickr. Then it hit me that the challenge should live and breathe ON Flickr. My weekly entry is not the focus of Friday Finds, all the photographs submitted through the Flickr group during the week are.

I don’t limit the submissions to people who know about my blog. Every week I search Flickr for photographs matching the theme and I invite them to the Friday Finds group. I change the group’s title each week to reflect the current challenge. I’m finding a lot of great contacts through the challenge and I cannot believe the talent of those participating every week!

Picking Photographs for the Galleries

On Friday morning, I open the group pool and look through all the submissions in it. I tend to open several each in their own tab and look through them one at a time. If I see a shot that speaks to me, I add it to the gallery. I make sure I look through all submissions before making any final decisions.

While I do look for technically awesome photos, I also look for a lot more. A story that’s told, something quirky and personal. For each of my Friday Finds galleries, I hope to put together an interesting collection of photographs while still trying to draw attention to all the submissions.

By inviting photos to the Flickr group, there are always plenty of absolutely amazing photography to select from. It makes the process of limiting the submissions to 18 in a gallery especially difficult.

Life at Sea…

For more fabulous boat themed shots, start with the Boat Gallery on Flickr to see all the photos I selected to highlight. Below you’ll see all of this week’s submissions. Click on an image and you should be able to navigate through all 67 entries!

The Next Theme Is: Black & White!

Please enter up to five submissions to the Flickr pool by next Friday morning and tag the photograph with dwcff-bw if you’d like the thumbnail to display on this site. You can see current submissions and read through the qualification guidelines on the Friday Finds page

Link Up

If you’d like to help promote the challenge, feel free to grab my button and link to this page!

This button was made by Christy of Skinned Knees. The photograph used is New “Camera”!, used under the Attribution 2.0 Generic license. By the way, please go check out that photographer’s site, One Failed Experiment.

Share YOUR favorite reads this week and link up to Friday Favorites at Life Without Pink!