About Flickr

Launched in 2004, Flickr is an image and video hosting Web site and online community, located at http://www.flickr.com/.

A free Flickr account allows users to upload 100MB of photos and two videos per month whereas a paid Pro account allows ad-free browsing and unlimited uploads.

Some of the benefits of uploading your images to Flickr include:

• the ability to embed a slide show presentation of your images in your own Web site
• enables new ways of organizing your images and reaching your target audience more easily
• access to your images in as many ways as possible: RSS, Twitter, Facebook, mobile devices, blogs, etc.
• provides a greater presence on the Internet which improves your credibility with search engines and increases traffic flow to your Web site
• allows metadata to be added to your images such as title, description and tags
• add location positioning to your images by using geo-tagging
• view statistics for your images to see how people are finding your images

Image storage within FAO

1. FAO mediabase

FAO mediabase is the official online digital photo archive of FAO.  Maintained by the Office for Communication, Partnerships and Advocacy (OCP), it contains photographs shot by official FAO photographers working at headquarters and in the field.  These images document the people we serve, the problems they face, the global issues that touch their lives, and the ways in which FAO is helping. FAO mediabase is available for FAO employees and other registered users.  Use it to browse, search and download photographs from the collection.  Contact the Photo Library  to establish an FAO mediabase account.

2. EIMS
EIMS is the electronic publishing tool of FAO maintained by OEK. It includes photos provided by FAO technical departments and decentralized offices. It allows for the preservation of FAO photos and if requested also online dissemination.

With the new version of EIMS (currently under development), users will be able to simultaneously upload images to EIMS and to a Flickr account.

Contact the Web Guide for more information about managing and archiving your images in EIMS.

FAO’s presence on Flickr

Currently, FAO maintains two corporate Flickr accounts and a Flickr group:

• “FAO News”, administered by the Photo Library within the Office of Corporate Communications and External Relations, used to rapidly disseminate images of newsworthy FAO events to the media, and to reinforce the Organization’s image as an active, credible, world-class institution. Typically, the images are events-oriented with clear FAO “branding” visible in most of the frames. Photography uploaded to the account is always professionally shot to meet international media standards, and is available for immediate download at high resolution, subject to published terms and conditions regarding credit and copyright.
• “FAO of the UN”, administered by OCP, used to collect and share photographs shot by FAO staff, of FAO subjects and of FAO’s work in the field.

FAO's policy on Flickr

At present, the Organization’s policy is to have a strong corporate presence on Flickr. Units / offices are invited to support the Organization-wide Flickr presence by:

1. promoting the link to the “FAO News” photostream on their Web pages when and where they consider it appropriate, and
2. contributing relevant images to the “FAO of the UN” Flickr group.

FAO affiliated Flickr accounts

If you need to establish an FAO affiliated account on Flickr, contact OCP to register the account details, agree on the account’s name, and receive a briefing on the FAO policy on Flickr.

Flickr accounts may be managed by short-term personnel so it is important that log-in details for the account are shared with the Web Guide team, as they may be lost in the case of staff movements. We maintain a confidential registry of these details, which is accessed only by authorized administrators.

The correct naming convention should be used for FAO affiliated accounts, e.g. ‘FAO LEAD’, ‘FAO EMPRES’ etc.

OCP also maintains a “FAO of the UN” Flickr account and this can be used if you would like to upload photos to Flickr but not open a Flickr account. Contact OCP for more information.

FAO photos on Flickr: quality criteria

To publish photos on a FAO Flickr account, and to contribute photos to the “FAO of the UN” Flickr group, the following quality criteria should be applied.

To qualify for inclusion, a photograph should:

• be of reasonably good quality (in terms of focus, composition and resolution)
• depict FAO subject matter and/or FAO work in the field
• have the written consent of persons appearing in any photo (permission form)
• contain no content that could be damaging to the Organization or to individuals appearing in the photo
• be carefully selected (avoid uploading 10 photos of the same subject, better to select the best 2 or 3 photos)

A photograh should also contain the following information:

• a descriptive title
• a description, including the text "©FAO www.fao.org" if appropriate and contact details
• meaningful tags (keywords), if images are the property of FAO include the text "FAO of the UN" and "Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations"
• whether you would like to enable public comments on your photograph
• include the date when the photograph was taken
• geo-tag images to indicate location

These quality criteria should be applied to all images of any FAO associated Flickr account and to images added to the “FAO of the UN” group.

How to add images to the “FAO of the UN” group

To include an image in the “FAO of the UN” Flickr group you must first create or sign into the FAO affiliated Flickr account and then request to join the group, see below for more information on Flickr accounts.

When accepted, individual images already uploaded to the FAO affiliated Flickr account may be associated with the “FAO of the UN” group by selecting “Add to group” from the “Actions” drop down menu. See fig. 1.

Fig. 1: Adding an image to a group in Flickr

Use “Batch Organize” to associate more than one image at a time to the group.

More information on Flickr groups is available from their help page.

Contact OCP if you need further advice on including your photos in the “FAO of the UN” Flickr group.

Copyright

FAO images are all right reserved (see FAO copyright policy). As a general guideline, it is requested that all FAO photos have credit information, if possible.