I probably mentioned this way back in November, but I love being presented with the challenge of a limitation, which is why I enjoyed the Photo A Day challenge so much. It was a great deal of fun to look at each prompt and contemplate how I could respond to it, preferably in a fashion that was uniquely mine.
For all of these reasons and more, I decided to jump back on the Photo A Day bandwagon for January and have a bit of fun. And this is where we run into trouble, because the easiest way to play the game is to use Instagram and, as of the sixteenth of January, Instagram’s image policy will be the same as facebook’s. This is the very same policy that has vastly limited my tendency to upload photos to facebook, which could become somewhat problematic when you’re trying to use a social media outlet that is based solely around images.
So where can I share my photos after the sixteenth? Facebook is obviously no good; flickr is a possiblity; posting them here could also work. I just don’t know! The main reason I enjoy posting the Photo A Day images on Instagram is that it easily allows me to go and have a look at how other people have responded to each prompt. If I post the photos here, they’ll be a little lost; outcasts from the Photo A Day community.
If anyone has any ideas, please send them my way. Maybe I’ll just stick with Instagram after all – those images are only meant to be fleeting and if Instagram thinks they’re worth using as part of their advertising, then I probably should be flattered.
Of course, it would be nice to be acknowledged and compensated as well, but that’s the price we pay for these free services.
In the meantime, here is the list of prompts for January’s Photo A Day. If you click on the image, you’ll be taken to the original blog post with more information about the challenge.
Is anyone thinking of joining me this month? It’s never too late to start – I didn’t begin until the eighth, so there’s plenty of time to get on board and have a little fun with your phone camera.

You have reached the blog of Katiefoolery: a writer, a photographer and a long term procrastinator. In this blog, you can expect to find ramblings about all manner of subjects, usually accompanied by photographs.
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A friend mentioned recently that Flickr might be setting up a rival service to Instagram. Maybe check out their terms of use
That sounds very promising – I’ll keep an eye on developments there. Thanks!
Flickr has a pretty active community, it’s just different in feel to instagram – maybe a bit of a combination of an older userbase and focus on tagging with contextual tags (and I guess, despite being around for longer isn’t as popular or well known). You can restrict download and sharing rights if you so wish – but I confess I am sad when an image isn’t licenced with creative commons so I can make it a pretty desktop background.
I’m OK with the change in TOS at Instagram – I guess because I feel that sharing anything on the internets comes with the expectation that your exclusive ownership rights are compromised.
Flickr’s a weird one, isn’t it? I know it’s considered social media, but I’ve never seen it that way. To me, it’s always been about having somewhere to host easily re-sized blog photos or to follow groups.
I’ll probably stick with Instagram, too. It makes sense in a way, considering the only photos I upload to facebook tend to be instagram ones.
Flikr does have an app for phones and stuff and is quite similar to instagram – filters and all that.
and also EyeEm which I’m also using is JUST like instagram only a bit better because you don’t need to have square images any more. I’m using both at the moment, because I’ll be deleting my instagram account this weekend.
I’ve noticed EyeEm being mentioned a bit lately – I’ll definitely check that one out. Thanks!
I would suggest either Flickr or Tumblr! You probably have more control over your photos on Flickr, but Tumblr is still a good alternative.
I already use flickr for my blog photos, but until now, I’ve avoided putting phone photos on there, for whatever reason. Tumblr could work, except I seem to be incapable of understanding its point. It just seems to be a slightly different version of Pinterest to me; everyone’s sharing other people’s creations rather than creating things themselves. I don’t get it!
Instagram isn’t actually claiming the right to the photos: they put out a statement clarifying that they had no plans to do that right after all the drama went down, but I think it got lost in all the fuss that was going on at the time! I got an email from them yesterday, though, confirming that they don’t claim ownership of my images and will not be using them in advertising, so you might be able to just continue there (if you trust them, of course…!). I’m doing a year in photos challenge, but have also a bit lost about where to share them: I don’t have any issue with Instagram, but I want to post them on my blog too, and I know a lot of people hate Instagram roundups, so I feel stupidly awkward about it!
Yep – it’s just the same as facebook’s current photo policy. I wonder how many of the people who were going nuts over instagram’s proposed changes happily upload photos to facebook on a regular basis?
Once I realised the only photos I ever share on facebook are my instagram ones, I figured it just makes sense to stick with instagram for the time being. It’s easy and everybody’s using it, so I’ll just wait and see how it all goes.