Girl About O-Town

Being the regular reader I am of new Ottawa blog Apartment 613, I have noted their consistent use of Flickr photos in their posts.  They have even started their own Apartment 613 Flickr group to encourage contributions.  Smart.

According to Wikipedia, “Flickr is an image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community platform. In addition to being a popular Web site for users to share personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers as a photo repository.  As of June 2009, it claims to host more than 3.6 billion images, up from 3 billion in November of 2008″.

Well this girlaboutOtown is a bit of a photo enthusiast, and I too regularly troll this image-sharing goldmine for fun and inspiration.  I am indeed signed in, and although I would not consider myself a Flickr fanatic, I am constantly fascinated and impressed by the calibre of work uploaded by professionals and amateurs alike.  Every time I go looking, I vow to take better advantage of this fabulous site.

Anyway, intrigued by the presence of an Apartment613 Flickr pool, I went looking to see what else I could find about Ottawa.  Would you believe what came up when I searched? 

Flickr found more than 500, 000 photos tagged Ottawa, and more than 1000 groups.  Subtract any reference to Kansas, and there are plenty of images to sort through…

Here is a selection of the largest and most active Ottawa related Flickr groups:

• Ottawa Group – 1,693 members and more than 31, 000 individual photos!
• Flickr Ottawa – 293 members & 5,678 photos
• Ottawa Life – 191 members & 5,944 photos
• Greater Ottawa – 155 members & 3,467 photos
• Ottawa and Surroundings – 139 members & 2,340 photos

Here too are a few smaller Flickr groups with special interests:

• Ottawa Film Shooters – Still shooting photos with old-fashioned film.
• Parliament Hill- Images of the icon only please…
• Ottawa Street Art -   Graffiti, stencils, installations, and stickers qualify.
• Ottawa Birds – Yes.  Real birds. The kind that fly.
• Ottawa Dog Blog- Dogs too.
• Cheap Eats Ottawa- The same as the blog, only in pictures!

Finally, here are a few of the brave individuals who take great photographs and share them with the world:

• Rustybuckets – Amazing graphic representations of everyday things.
• MikeyG – This guy is prolific, and seems to always be where the action is…
• Jo Stockton – Eats well, lives well, and shoots great pictures.
• JB Hildebrand – This fabulous freelancer has the arts & culture scene covered, and makes Ottawa look super-cool…

Andrew Vincent at Raw Sugar Cafe by Jesse Hildebrand on Flickr. 

Amateur or professional, serious or not, if you live in Ottawa and love photography why not check out one of the city’s many Flickr groups?  Lurk if you prefer, or leap right in! 

For more information on photography in Ottawa, you can also find some hugely helpful listings at OttawaStart.com’s Photography Guide.