if you’ve kept up lately, Yahoo/Flickr (honestly, i’m still uncertain as to how i’m supposed to refer to them as, so we’ll just say “Flickr”) recently dropped a few bombs on the internet. for starters, they finally overhauled the look of the site, something long, long, long overdue. many dig it, many hate it. no surprise there. they’ve also done away with the “pro” accounts as they’ll now be offering ad-supported free accounts with 1TB of storage. you can still purchase  ”"pro” account, but it’ll now cost you twice as much ($50) and all it does is remove the ads. extra storage space? just… yeah. honestly, if you need that much online space to display your photographs, you may have deeper issues.

but then Marissa Mayer set the photo world aflame with her quip in defense of no longer offering “pro” accounts by stating there no longer is such a thing as a professional photographer. you can go find a direct quote yourself, though that isn’t far off the mark. and we all got angry. and mad. and flamed Flickr and Yahoo for it. we’re a sensitive bunch, and for decent reason. the encroachment into “professional” territory increases on what seems a daily basis, and the line between “professional” and “amateur/hobbyist” is blurred in the public space to the point of almost not being there. so when a high-powered CEO of a major internet entity who happens to run (despite what blogs would have you think) a massive photo site, it’s like a stick of dynamite got lit under our collective asses. and i was right there with everyone else, i will not deny it!

since then, Mayer’s walked the comment back a bit, so… whatever. i’ve also done a bit more personal thinking on this, especially after reading an opinion piece on Petapixel from someone who apparently is upset that their “Pro” badge on Flickr is in danger of being unaffordable (because frankly, the upgrade system from here on out is a little wonky) and who has uploaded over 80,000 photos to Flickr. people hold that “Pro” badge on Flickr in way too high a regard.

this is just all very silly. maybe. in the end, i ultimately don’t care what Mayer said or misspoke or whatever. people pay us (both the specific US and the general EVERYONE ) to take their photographs. and i feel confident in saying folks i talk to at length about this sort of stuff are of professional level. i also feel REALLY confident in stating none of them use Flickr as our main/sole means of presenting work. i mean… you could, but why, when you have the Zenfolios and Smugmugs of the world?

we still will use Flickr. for my personal use, it’s where everything goes, and i share from there to Facebook when i feel the urge and embed the rest into my blog posts here. for business use, it’s where we post our blog previews for viewing outside of Facebook. as far as i’m aware, Flickr remains, with or without Mayer’s feelings, the “safest” place for photographers to post their work (outside of, again, somewhere like Zenfolio or Smugmug) for public consumption when it comes to a clear statement of ownership and what is and isn’t allowable as far as what the service does with your photos*. and i write that in complete “i don’t care” attitude towards 500px. i know that comes off as catty or lazy, but i have tried for over a year to make 500px work for me and i just… can’t… do… it.

i think what is maybe the biggest head scratcher of the whole thing is what seems to be an incongruence of outrage to actual users, at least from my perspective. when i ask folks in in groups online (like on Facebook), “who here’s on Flickr?” and i get one response, it’s a little surprising that the yelling is so loud. as in, “wait, you really care what the CEO of a major corporation says about a service you don’t really use?” and let’s be 100%, completely honest here: did anyone outside of the professional circle hear about this, much less care? the hypothetical of this leading to Flickr not caring about pros or leaving the pros behind or whatever is ridiculous. for one, no… it’s 2013, they likely don’t care because Yahoo has bigger issues and are trying to make money. and second: THEY JUST GAVE YOU A TERABYTE OF FREE SPACE. FREE. it’s free. how stinking incredible is that? free. upload your high-res work and see it displayed in glorious detail! and i guarantee, unless you decide you’d like to transfer your full portfolio over, you will never ever get close to filling it up.

tl;dr- after thinking about it, meh. Marissa Mayer’s one person who said a dumb thing that only mattered to us but gave us 1TB of upload space for free.

now… if the president gets up on a podium and says there are no more professional photographers, then we may have an actual issue.

*this is a terribly structure sentence but i’m not going to try and fix it.