If you want to get your images out there and get published in books, calendars, magazines, etc… then you need to make sure that all of the images you post on flickr.com are tagged properly.  99% of the requests I get for my images are through flickr because someone searched a specific animal and came across my stuff.   I have yet to contact any organization myself offering images, everything I’ve been published in so far is because people contacted me.

For example, this photo below would be tagged:   circle b bar reserve, lakeland, florida, polk county, duck, bird, flight, black bellied whistling duck, juvenile.

I’ve got the location covered, the type of animal it is, the specific name of the animal, and also the fact that it’s a juvenile and in flight.

That way, should someone be looking for a Florida duck in flight, or some sort of wildlife from Polk County, this image would be returned in their search on flickr and possibly through a google search as well.

Also, make sure that there’s a way for someone to contact you other than through flickr messages.  Some of these companies or individuals looking for images don’t have a flickr account.  Update your flickr profile to include a way for them to contact you outside of flickr, such as a link to your contact page on your website or blog.  I have my flickr profile updated and I also have my website address right in my watermark that I place on all of my photos.

That’s about it for tagging.  For me, it’s important.  It helps me locate my own images on flickr and it helps other people find my images on flickr.

I took one of my shots from my May 2009 road trip and textured it in Photoshop the other day.  It’s a photo I took while we were staying at the campground in Arches National Park.  It also made Flickr’s Explore front page, but I missed getting a screen shot of it.  Here’s the photo:

Explored: Nov 21, 2009 #30

If you’re interested in purchasing any of my textured images, you can check out everything I have for sale in my Imagekind gallery right HERE.

Here’s the group shot from our Viera Wetlands Flickr meet up…check out all those peeps!  We had such a great time.  Click the photo to be taken to it’s flickr page to see links to all of the photographers.  And yes, I’m in there too

We had an awesome meet up this past weekend at Viera Wetlands and a HUGE turnout!  I was glad to catch up with old friends and meet new ones.  It’s always great to put a face with a flickr screen name.

First, we all met at Viera Wetlands for some shooting there.

Here’s just a few of the many people we had at the meet up.

There were bald eagles there, but these two were way off in a tree, had to crop this image quite a bit so you could see them…

And I was able to get my first shot of an American Bittern:

Then it was on to visit the Florida Scrub Jays, what cute and BRAVE little guys these birds are!

We had a great time and I’m looking forward to next month’s meet up!