Flickr and the Library of Congress

Flickr, the photosharing site, has teamed up with the Library of Congress, the keepers of thousands of historic photos, in order to put the power of Web 2.0 and user-generated content to good use. Flickr will host over three thousand of the Library's images (the program is still in the pilot stage) and invite Flickr members to tag or comment on photos such as the one above. In this way, the photos become more public for people like us, and the Library can harness the collective knowledge of the public to enhance their metadata for the images, improving the quality of the collection. It always interests me when I see things like this: new technologies enabling ordinary people to collectively have a greater impact than ever before.

Here are the Library's thoughts before and 24 hours after the pilot program started.
Here are Flickr's thoughts before and 24 hours after the program started.
Here's the Flickr site: The Commons.

It's Snowing!

Atlanta Snow

Atlanta snow--who would have guessed? It didn't stick though, unfortunately. One of my roommates did make a lovely little snowman outside our door.

Broken

Broken

This photo was taken for an assignment for the GT Photo Club. The theme for the week was "Broken," so we were supposed to take a picture that somehow embodied that theme. I had been walking past this broken glass on my way to and from class several times a day all week, and finally found the time to go out and shoot it. The next day, someone had cleaned up the glass and it was gone. Goes to show you shouldn't wait to shoot something you're interested in--it's all only temporary.

The picture was conceived, pre-visualized, shot, and processed within about an hour and half. This is a markedly different approach than my other pictures, some of which I've been working on for months. I think there are some virtues in this fast-paced approach, at least some of the time. A raw or half-processed photograph sitting on a hard drive is useless--something has to get produced, even if it is a bit rough around the edges.

I just discovered the GT Photo Club a few weeks ago, and joined it for exactly this kind of thing. If I let it, it will give me a sense of obligation to pick up my camera and take pictures. Knowing me, I will quickly let my schoolwork overtake me, and not make time for photography, which should probably be as high a priority as coursework, if only for my own sanity. It looks like school already gets in the way, though; I found out this morning that I will have to miss the next two Photo Club meetings due to some extra stuff I have to do for a certain class. C'est la vie.