The design might be modern but it is very distracting. The photos are surrounded closely by so many other photos that it is difficult to enjoy the beauty of a particular photo - it like a painting framed by a gold gilded frame which is more beautiful than the painting itself. Photography is an art form but in this new layout the art is overwhelmed by its 'evil' cousin, design.
Agreed. I also miss being able to see photo titles for all of the displayed pictures. Now, in order to view the title, you must mouse over the photo which is a tedious task when there are hundreds of images.
Yes, but is it really necessary to have a feed screen in everything? There's already Facebook and Google+ for that. Flickr was nice because it was geard towards the less ephemeral. I guess "less ephemeral" goes against the zeitgeist.
But it is a feed of contact photos. The presentation makes sense.
With the flickr redesign (and, more importantly, the massive speed up of their backend servers), I've looked at dramatically more of my contact and group photos in the past two days than I did in years prior combined. It makes it so pleasant and effortless.