Saturday, February 10, 2024

A guide to using my Flickr resources using collections

It has often occurred to me over the past several years that the structure of my Flickr account (dedicated mostly to archaeological sites and artifacts from the ancient Mediterranean in its broadest sense) is probably somewhat opaque to most users. I imagine that, typically, if you've encountered it previously, it was a search result for some ancient type of thing or site you were googling. And that's great! That's part of the reason I try to get 100% of your daily tags and metadata into each photo (the Flickr 75-tag limit per photo is kind of a bummer, though). 

There are other ways, though. For some reason, Flickr makes it very hard to even learn of the existence of Collections, which are albums full of albums. A tiny bit of structured data for you! Anyway, they're available here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dandiffendale/collections

The first collection is "Topography," within which you will find sub-collections by country. The most thorough by far are Greece and Italy. (n.b. there are also several countries that I haven't visited, but which have produced artifacts that I've photographed elsewhere, so they have a collection, but are usually very skimpy in terms of uploaded photos.) Within each country are further nested sub-collections by region or state, and within each region are the albums. The principal types of topographic albums are Sites (usually titled with the ancient name(s), sometimes with a nod to the modern name) and Museums (these also include photos of a museum's permanent collection that I've photographed on display on loan somewhere else). Occasionally some non-ancient album has snuck in.

The next collection is "Subject/Object Types." This is a big one, and there are no sub-collections. For now, it's kind of a grab-bag of albums that haven't gotten structured elsewhere. These are albums based on type of thing or concept. A few examples (out of the current 194 albums within) include "Ancient architectural models," "Ancient molds," "Ancient slavery," "ELC votives," "Greek athletics," "Museum galleries," "Small bronzes." Ideally I have attempted to organize the contents of each album chronologically, oldest to most recent, but in practice this is rare.

Next collection: "Gods, heroes, and mythical creatures." As it says on the tin. If you don't see an album here of the figure you're looking for, it doesn't mean there isn't a relevant photo; I just might not have created a special folder yet.

Collection: "Ancient persons." A grab-bag of emperors and other personalities who had their picture taken more than once in antiquity. For now pretty sparsely populated--just give me another 50 years or so... 

Collection: "Animals." Within you will find albums collecting photos of different animals (as represented in ancient visual media, for the most part).

Collection: "Ceramics by type." A relatively recent creation. Different wares, classes, techniques. No structure as yet other than alphabetization. 

Collection: "Named vase-painters, groups, etc." Also recent. Also, a lot of the albums within will have photos of only a single pot attributed to the titular painter. Someday, maybe, they will get friends.

Collection: "Materials." Go here if you're looking for photos of something made out of a particular material (for example, bronze, or a particular kind of marble [though, again, marble sub-categories remain mostly aspirational]).

Collection: "Particular objects and contexts." The albums within are typically tomb-groups where I've photographed the contents individually, or particular artifacts/artworks that warrant multiple photos. There's no strict criterion, and I could probably create more of these albums.

Collection: "Exhibits." These are albums of galleries and artifacts displayed in special exhibits. Frustratingly, Flickr doesn't show you very much of the title of each from this page. 

Collection: "Historic collections." These are albums collecting artifacts that once formed part of a particular or well-known private collection, which are now either split among multiple museums or simply make up a relevant part of a single museum.

Collection: "Inscriptions." Epigrafiends go here: sub-collections of inscriptions divided by language.

Collection: "Sculptors and their traditions." Totally aspirational, mostly a holding tank for future albums. 

Collection: "Masonry styles." Another almost empty, aspirational collection.


There's no grand plan, there's only good intentions and fickle attentions... There are a few classes of material that I try to make a point of always uploading once I've photographed them, however; if you're dying of boredom, you could try to figure out what they are. And if structure isn't your thing, you can as always just dive into the photostream from the most recent uploads here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dandiffendale/

As always, if there's something you're looking for and don't see it on my Flickr account, feel free to drop me a line and ask. I have literally tens of thousands of photos taken but not "yet" uploaded. In particular, if there's an album with only a single photo in it, it's very likely that I have others of that category not yet edited.

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