Posts Tagged ‘flickr’
The Decisive Moment – Flickr, the Royal Wedding and the Death of Osama Bin Laden
Night and Day
The royal wedding and the execution of Osama Bin Laden are a good reminder of how far the news agenda can lurch in the space of a couple of days. On Friday and during the weekend, the run was all for images of expensive dresses, dashing Rolls Royces, cheering crowds and flapping plastic flags. By Monday morning these pictures had been replaced by other more grisly ones, of Bin Laden’s very odd, stark hideaway in rural Abbottabad – his old rooms upturned in the chaos of the gunfight, his carpet smeared in blood, a smashed clock and half-full medicinal bottles on an empty shelf.
Among all the interesting coverage of both these stories are a number of images on Flickr. For some years governments, organisations, political parties and so on have been using Flickr as a medium to publish official photographs and images. A British Monarchy Photostream documents the doings of the royal family and, over the weekend, they uploaded a wide-range of wedding shots that include sets devoted to the balcony scenes, the RAF flyover and a specially-commissioned McVities Cake, which had been requested by Prince William.
More interesting than this, for several reasons, is the Official Whitehouse Photostream. The photos published here are the work of Pete Souza, a photographer who travelled across the Hindu Kush in 2001 to cover the fall of the Taliban and, in 2009, was appointed Official White House Photographer.
Pete Souza’s photographs are remarkably revealing and candid. They give a glimpse into the day-to-day life of the President and his aides, and also the decision-making processes behind important acts of government. The photo at the top of this piece is taken by Souza. It shows Obama, Vice President Biden and other senior members the administration receiving a briefing on Sunday night, a time that was described afterwards by counterterrorism adviser John Brennan as ‘one of the most anxiety-filled periods of time in the lives of the people who were assembled here.’
Souza’s photograph has appeared in the world’s press over the last few days. On a macro level, it is a perfect example of what the French photojournalist Henri Cartier-Bresson referred to as the decisive moment. Obama is hunched forward on his chair, cold eyes on the screen. Hilary Clinton covers her mouth with a hand, concealing an expression which might either suggest shock or concentration. It feels like a decisive moment because the fate of the mission is not yet determined and, on a grander level, Obama’s hopes of re-election next year might even rest on its success.
Social media is helping to expose these moments, even at the top of society, and more transparency can only be a good thing. It connects people to the political process; shows the care and concern of those in power and encourages interaction. I’m writing this at a quarter to twelve in the morning of 4 May and, over the past few days, 1,621,516 people have viewed the image on Flickr – a staggering number.
Just about all of the White House’s images are available to be re-published by others, being licensed under a special category United States Governmental Work. In the UK all of the royal family’s photos and most of those from the Prime Minister’s Official Photostream are produced by the PA, and are therefore protected by copyright.
While I’m going with Flickr, I thought that I’d list some of the other interesting photostreams that are currently being updated. There are four here which are particularly useful for journalists, as they are licensed to be reused:
Metropolitan Police – Great images of events, vehicles and so on.
Cabinet Office – Good quality photos. They include useful profile shots of various politicians like Nick Clegg and Francis Maude
UK Home Office – Day to day work of the department.
HM Treasury – Really useful. Not just day to day work of the department, but also official graphs and stats.
And some others: (mostly unlicensed)
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Image credit – Official WhiteHouse on Flickr
The Internet: five years ago
2005: social media?
About five years after its launch, last Sunday evening, You Tube announced that they are now receiving two billion hits per day. On their official blog they wrote:
Five years ago, after months of late nights, testing and preparation, YouTube’s founders launched the first beta version of YouTube.com in May, with a simple mission: give anyone a place to easily upload their videos and share them with the world. Whether you were an aspiring filmmaker, a politician, a proud parent, or someone who just wanted to connect with something bigger, YouTube became the place where you could broadcast yourself. [Link to full post]
Not only is the two billion milestone noteworthy, but the fact that the site is five years old is also well worth noting.
There’s a good argument that 2005 was the pivotal year in the shaping of the Internet as we know it. You Tube was founded, Mark Zuckerberg opened Facebook up to schools across America, and Yahoo acquired two year-old Del.icio.us and one year-old Flickr.
For the sake of nostalgia, here is what some of these websites looked like back then, five years ago.
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You Tube
Billed rather simply as a digital photo repository back in 2005 – their logo has hardly changed a bit in the last five years. The homepage design obviously owes quite a bit to Google’s, who, in any case, bought the site in November 2006 for $1.65 billion.
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Google
In 2005 Google was already looking fairly grown up and confident. Very few changes were made to this minimalist homepage design until just a few weeks ago.
You’ll spot here that back then Google were busy promoting Froogle, their price comparison service which was later rebranded as Google Product Search.
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Blogger
In May 2005, blogger was already six years old. Therefore it predates Web 2.0 and is one of a few notable survivors of the Dot Com Crash in 2000. It had been acquired by Google in 2003 and by the time of this screenshot it was by far the most popular blogging software available.
In May 2005 they launched Blogger Mobile, which allowed people to blog by text message –making them, by my reckoning, just about two years too early.
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WordPress
WordPress would supplant Blogger in popularity over the next few years. It’s interesting to note, however, their reasons for encouraging people to use their software. ‘You can stop sending mass emails to everyone’, ‘You can archive your thoughts’ and ‘Why the heck not?’
Indeed.
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Facebook
Facebook has retained this familiar feel from the start, but its evolution has been a little more complex than most.
Back in 2005 there were two Facebooks, one for people in college and one for people in high school. All the dots would be joined up over the next year as it began the march that would see it become the most popular site in America.
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The BBC
Back in 2005 I had never written a blog, had never used Facebook and only seen a handful of You Tube videos, but I was already mildly addicted to the Internet. And from a sunny Madrid and a fitful Internet connection, the BBC’s official site was where I spent most of my time.
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The Guardian
And 2005 was a time before guardian.co.uk existed. Back then it was known as the Guardian Unlimited – a website that promised such things as ‘All the headlines from today’s first edition.’
From that I suppose you can summise that the website was still being considered as some kind of digital reflection of the newspaper – and not really a strong publication in its own right.
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Flickr
Flickr now hosts more than four billion images and is the most popular image sharing site on the web. Back in 2005 PC World were offering them some kind words:
‘Cutting edge real-time photo sharing’, they said. They were right.
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And in 2006 … Twitter
Twitter didn’t exist in 2005 and it wouldn’t appear properly until more than a year or so later. Therefore it’s just tagged on to the end of this post. It’s a good demonstation of just what can be done in four years with a scruffily designed website, a clever idea and a willingness to stick with your logo through thick and thin.
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Top image credit: TonVC on Flickr
Screen shots pulled out of the Way Back Machine
Flickr and the Creative Commons
Photo by the White House Official Photostream
Digital Communism and the Creative Commons
Flickr has long been one of my favourite sites on the Internet. Easy to navigate, full of fantastic images, and with a system (the Creative Commons) that allows everyone to properly acknowledge the authors of work.
Any business, blogger or journalist can benefit from Flickr by properly (and ethically) using the Creative Commons. Just today Kate Day (@kate_day) pointed out that The Official White House Photostream had made available an album documenting President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office.
The image at the top of this post is taken from that collection, and so is this below:
Photo by the White House Official Photostream
It’s almost impossible to estimate how much such a picture would have cost just a decade ago – or, indeed, if it would have been possible in the first place. Now you can use it for yourself for free. All you have to do is abide by the terms of the license which asks that the original author is given credit.
And testament to the pace, versatility and quality of Flickr, here are another five photos that have been added in just the last two weeks; each of them quite brilliant.
Five Creative Commons Photos from Flickr in April
1. Charlotte by Gattou/Lucie I try but miss time to catch up : o
2. Swing on BART by y3rdua
3. So Billy said, hey Stagger! I’m gonna make my big attack. I’m gonna have to leave my knife in your back by harold.lloyd (won’t somebody think of the bokeh?)
4. A spasso nel senese in primavera by carlotardani
5. The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad by this chaplady
