By Alex Schlotzer:

In the first of a series of articles, theangle’s managing editor Alex Schlotzer shares tips and tricks for the use of photo sharing sites for the activist and citizen reporter. This advice first appeared in an April 16 post in Alex’s blog.

One of the tools available to the online activist is the world of picture sharing sites. Picture sharing sites are just that, sites where people upload and share their pictures with their friends; their family; the sites’ respective communities; and the rest of the world. There are loads of picture sharing websites with a range of functionalities.

I’ve used picture sharing websites for as long as they’ve been around. As an activist I’ve used these websites to connect with fellow campaigners, activists and supporters through pictures; telling the story. In building support for a campaign or action, using pictures can be a powerful way of complimenting material, website/blog content and add a stronger connection with the campaign.

Over the years, I’ve regularly been asked about how activists can use picture sharing websites? And what sorts of pictures do you take?

So I figured I’d share five of my top tips for using picture sharing websites as an activist; and some thoughts about the sorts of pictures to take.

1. Telling the Story with Pictures

In building support for a campaign or action, using pictures can be powerful way of complimenting material and add a more personal touch to the campaign. It gives supporters a sense of being on the inside, having a sense of connection with the campaign. The old adage “A picture tells a thousand words” has never been truer in the online world. But it’s important to consider the pictures you want to take and how they contribute to the story you’re trying to tell.

Using picture sharing sites like Flickr or photobucket, it’s possible to reach out to those in their respective communities. These site also make it possible to publish pictures to other social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Digg. In addition they allow for pictures to be published to blogs and websites. Pictures are also a great way of breaking up text heavy content. Through mobile phone cameras (and of course the web-enabled kind) it’s possible to take pictures of campaign activities as they happen – and share them with a global audience in a matter of minutes – see tip 2.

2. Share immediately and widely

3G and web-enabled mobile phones makes it possible to share pictures immediately with your social media connections. By uploading directly to your picture sharing website while on-the-go it is possible to create a sense of immediacy and provide up-to-the-minute information (aided by the picture’s title and tags). The pictures can be posted to blogs and on to websites to illustrate stories. Your pictures can also be made into slide shows, which can also be shared with your social media connections.

By sharing pictures immediately, it helps provide a sense of activity and action taking place. This may assist in generating some additional participants to a rally, march or an event. Progress and action are important to volunteers and supporters of campaigns; and to recruiting more supporters.

Some picture sharing websites, like Flickr, have iPhone applications allowing users to upload pictures directly from their iPhone’s picture album. Linked accounts makes it possible to publish the pictures not only to Flickr but also to other social networking sites like Facebook, Digg, Twitter and FriendFeed automatically, where you have an account.

To share widely requires attention to the picture sharing websites settings. The settings determine the level of privacy and include restrictions on who can share and download pictures. Spending time considering the settings is crucial to ensure they meet your sharing needs. Through your account’s settings, it’s also possible to link your picture sharing site account with your social networking accounts.

3. Tags and Titles

Tags and headings are important for picture content. They help improve the visibility and reach of your pictures to a broader audience. Some will also argue about including a description. it can definitely assist with making content more visible. They can also provide context and detail, which is useful in providing a narrative for a campaign. However, this can be very time consuming to do while uploading content on-the-go. In general a description should be included but if you’re on-the-go these can be time consuming especially while the action continues to unfold; they can be included after the event – see point 4 for more about descriptions.

Tags

Tags are very important. They make your content more visible and enables users to search your content by tags. It’s not only important to remember to tag your uploads, but to also consider the tags you use. You should avoid using acronyms unless they’re well known and commonly used, for example acronyms for the names of unions or government agencies and organisations. It’s also important to check multi-word tags to ensure they haven’t been split up.

It’s always best to use descriptive tags which identifies the event, location (use geo-tags where available), names of speakers, and organisations involved. It doesn’t hurt to incorporate general terms for example, union, environment, politics, event, rally etc. They can assist in identifying your material for users uncertain about specific details.

Titles

Titles have to be used for each upload. They don’t have to be clever plays on words when generally the best title is a simple one. Using a descriptive title is very useful for making the picture more visible. They provide users an idea of what is going on in the picture. If you’re on-the-go, a descriptive title can be useful when including a description at a later time.

Like with tags, titles can help make your pictures more easily found in searches through Google and Yahoo or through site searches. And like with tags, avoid using acronyms in the title unless they’re well known and commonly used.

4. Albums

Picture sharing websites allow users to organise their pictures into albums, just like you would in real life. And I strongly recommend you use albums to organise your pictures. They makes it easier to collate pictures by events and campaigns. Using albums also makes it easier and quicker for visitors to identify particular groupings of pictures. In addition, where someone finds a picture through a search engine (or site search), picture sharing sites will also list the other pictures in the album.

When it comes to including descriptions, the best place to do it, in my opinion, is in the album’s description. It gives the visitor an idea of what pictures they are likely to see in the album. With a description for the event included in the album’s description it means that there is less urgency in providing a description for individual pictures.

However, you can be creative and use the pictures’ descriptions as the narrative of an event, for example.

5. Use “Behind The Scenes” pictures

“Behind the scenes” pictures are those pictures that reveal the people and places that are behind the campaigns like organisers, coordinators, and volunteers etc going about their day-to-day activities.

These kinds of pictures reveal a human side to the campaign; people that are passionate about what they’re doing. It can help build a stronger personal connection with supporters. This in turn can improve the likelihood for people to take a greater interest in messages and to share content with their friends, family and co-workers.

Sometimes there are parts of the campaign where there is very little public activity. At these times of the campaign, supporters and volunteers can begin questioning whether any progress is being made. If there isn’t enough activity it gives an impression of a lack of progress, which may make it difficult to motivate people to support your campaign.

By using “Behind the scenes” pictures you are also giving an idea of the activity taking place “behind the scenes”. This maintains a connection with supporters and activists. It can also be used to help continue the campaign’s narrative.

What pictures to take?

It is best to get a range of different sorts of pictures, in my opinion, and don’t be afraid to get a lot of pictures. Pictures of places, groups and crowd shots, and individuals (volunteers, spokespeople etc), are the best kinds of pictures to snap. Pictures illustrating activity and emotion can help highlight achievements and progress. In addition it’s useful to have pictures from around the activity to get a sense of location – like land marks and well known buildings.

A question that is frequently asked is about getting releases signed.

It’s absolutely essential to get releases signed when taking pictures of individuals and small groups. Shots of large crowds are generally exempt. However, people can object to their image being used and you should identify them in the picture, note it and smudge them out later.

What does it all mean?

Providing pictorial content for blogs and websites is a great way of helping people connect with the campaign and the stories of the campaign. They help give context to events, activities and achievements. Using pictures can help improve traffic to your blogs and websites; and support the text and context of the campaign or activity.

Seeing pictures of people gathered for rallies; or people snaking through the streets in marches; or the volunteers and staff behind the scenes; or moments of progress and achievement, can speak louder than words in my humble opinion.

However you must be prepared for the task at hand.

The Checklist

• Set up your album (well) in advance of an event – write up the description for the event, details and location. Setting up your albums in advance can also help promote the event through picture sharing sites’ communities.
• Make sure you’ve included tags – include speakers’ names, city, state, event name, general terms etc. If you’re on-the-go make sure your tags are ready to go.
• Make sure your mobile phone/camera is fully charged.
• Don’t be afraid to share “behind the scenes” pictures to provide human faces to the campaign. This can help build more personal connections to the campaign.
• Ensure you have a list of speakers or presenters (spelled correctly) and know who’s who – reduces the need to chase down a list later or making identity mistakes.
• If you’re on-the-go share immediately and widely.
• Prepare a list (even a mental one) of the types of pictures you want to capture eg buildings, banners, speakers, crowd shots of people gathered for a rally or marching down the street etc.
• If you’re taking pictures of individuals (not including event speakers/dignitaries/public figures) you must have a signed release giving you permission to use their image – so don’t forget them!

Do you have any hints, tips or tricks for activists using photo sharing sites? Leave a comment with your hints, tips and/or tricks.

Managing editor of theangle.org, Alex Schlotzer is a straight talker when it comes to politics and loves to vent his spleen. Actively involved in Australian and international politics with a keen understanding of the dynamics of the political machine, Alex has a prolific online presence and has been a cyber activist for over 15 years. When not working at his day job for the union movement, he can be found at his blog and his exciting online project Australian Politics TV

Tags: activist, Alex Schlotzer, citizen reporter, how to, independent reporter, photo sharing