I feel certain that after you read this PDF from the Congressional Research Service about the global e-waste crisis, you’ll join with me in starting a worldwide movement to encourage people to stop consuming content from e-waste producing devices (that also require electricity from coal-burning, river-polluting plants) and go back to exclusively reading news from print: the recyclable medium.

(via: docuticker.com.)

Flickr has long had a feature called “sets” that allows a user to organize groupings of photos in any way the photographer wants to share them. Flickr recently added another feature that, at first, seems to be the same thing — but the new feature allows users to collect, annotate and display their favorite photos taken by other Flickr users. These “galleries” allow anyone to curate up to 15 photos — none of which can be their own. As an example of what you can do with such a gallery, I’ve curated a gallery of some of my favorite night-time Nashville photos found on Flickr. Another example of something you can do: If several friends are photographing the same event, it’s a great way to display a “best of” collection. (Note: a user can opt-out of allowing any of their photos to be displayed in such galleries.)

Boston.com’s “Big Picture” collection of moving photography of flooding from the southeast makes me think there’s an instant magazine in there somewhere (see yesterday’s post).

Boston.com’s “The Big Picture” is displaying some incredibly moving photography related to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. These images are worth all the words I could possibly write.

Via the BBC, I learned a few moments ago that today is the 40th anniversary of one of the most iconic photographs ever taken, Iain Macmillan’s shot of the Beatles crossing Abbey Road. Of course, we all know the photo because it became the famous album cover (and for some, because it played a part in one of the strangest urban legends of all time, the Paul is Dead conspiracy theory).

After hearing the story (yes, I actually listen to the BBC world news service streamed by my local public radio station) I used the new Flickr.com search to see how many photos have been tagged abbeyroad. The answer: 10,633. I’m sure that number will grow today, as there has been a parade at the “zebra crossing.”

As I looked at the album cover, of course I recalled my own copy of the album. I also thought about it and decided it’s likely the only album I’ve purchased in four different formats: Vinyl, 8-track, cassette and CD (I wish I’d hung onto all of them).

I then thought about album covers going, since 40 years ago, from something people saw displayed as a 12×12 inch printed artwork to something people see displayed as a 200×200 pixel thumbnail while playing a CD they’ve burned to iTunes (you still can’t actually purchase the Beatles catalog on iTunes).

While I love all this digital stuff, some things about it aren’t progress.

Bonus link: A webcam streams from the Abbey Road crossing 24/7. (via: mashable.com

[The photo strip at the top of this post are some thumbnails I grabbed from a Flickr search of "interesting" photos tagged abbeyroad. There are many more interesting ones where those came from.]

There are several reasons I love what photographer Peter Norby did on his Flickr account the other day. If you are viewing it as I am seeing it (on the morning of April 29) all 12 photos appearing on the front page of his account make up a mosaic celebrating a major accomplishment in the lives of his two children.

The first reason I love this: I’m a long time, avid user of Flickr and enjoy the way in which people are constantly coming up with ways to use its features and functions in new and unique ways. I not only find myself being awed by the beauty or skill displayed in the photography people share, but by the way in which they tag them, group them or find ways to build communities around different types of photos. But then, someone like Peter comes along and does something totally different (or, at least to me, totally different — others have done it) and I am awed in a completely new way. On the page, there are layers of artistic expression that perhaps only a geek into photography might appreciate about what Peter has done, but since that describes me, well, that’s the first reason I love it.

The second reason I love this: In my family, we have celebrated the exact same events many years ago (about 12, if my math is correct). “Suzuki” families appreciate the significance of what “a book recital” means — many months of practice, typically a year in the early books, can go into it. I know the pride (and relief) that a parent (and Suzuki “coach”) feels — and that are uniquely expressed on Peter’s Flickr page today. That it brought back such pleasant memories is the second reason I love it.

The ‘boxed set’ version of Joi Ito’s new book,
FREESOULS Captured & Released

Years ago, I decided my friend Joi Ito knows everyone. And not just that, he knows everything. And not just that, he is everywhere. And not just that, he knows how to connect people everywhere to other people with ideas anywhere.

Joi is the CEO of Creative Commons, the nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright.

Joi also is an incredible portrait photographer.

And now, a collection of his photographs has been published in a book called FREESOULS captured and released. The book is being published in two limited editions. A hard-cover “boxed set” book in an edition of 50 copies, and a limited edition soft-cover book with a print run of 1024 copies. As with almost everything Joi does, this approach provides a glimpse at a creative niche publishing model.

The book features Joi’s photographs of many of the people whose names are synonymous with the threads of theory and law and commerce and community and serendipity that are resulting in this ever-changing and beautifully chaotic thing happening here on the live and conversational and disruptive and collaborative and argumentative and alway expressive web.

I am honored to be included in the book.

And like everyone else whose photo is in the book, I provided a Creative Commons model release so that the name of Joi’s book, “FreeSouls,” could fulfill its purposeful pun. Over the years, Joi has discovered that many of the people who are written about in Wikipedia and other open-source spaces don’t have images displayed because of copyright issues.

With his book, Joi says, “I’m asking everyone to be much more open and giving about their image than most people typically are. I’m giving, you’re giving, we’re all giving to participate and to try to create this wonderful work, and allow others to create derivative works.”

I live in two worlds and appreciate the swirling debate on the value of intellectual property. I respect and protect the work of writers, photographers and artists whose work is featured in the media we create at Hammock Inc. However, when it comes to my personal photography or this blog, I grant a license that permits anyone to use the content for non-commercial purposes as long as the work is attributed to me.

I support the goals of Creative Commons and hope that other photographers and musicians and film-makers and bloggers and scientists and creators of all types will learn more about the various ways to utilize Creative Commons licenses to protect their work while still freeing their work to be used in ways that benefit everyone — especially the creator.

Because all of the photographs in Joi’s book can be used under a Creative Commons license, Oliver Ding was able to create this slide show explaining what a “FreeSoul” is:

Here is a set of photos I took earlier this week on the Gulf coast. If you are familiar with the area, they were shot near the Alabama-Florida border at Perdido Key, Florida, at Needle Rush Point.

I don’t typically blog about the launching and closing of magazines or magazine-related online ventures. However, when it involves a once grand, but now abused, magazine brand, I make exceptions. So, here’s a brief timeline of this topic on RexBlog:

September 22, 2004: I blogged about the hype oozing from the Time Inc. press release announcing the “Largest Magazine Rollout in Time Inc. History” — a plan to use the Life brand on a magazine that would be delivered on Fridays as a newspaper insert. A few days later, I wrote another post following up on the same theme.

March 26, 2007: Time Inc. issued a press release announcing it was shuttering the newspaper-delivered Life but was working on “a plan to launch a major portal to put its entire collection of 10 million images online.”

September 23, 2008: (I wonder if they know it’s four years, almost to the day of the 2004 announcement.) While not using that 10 million number anymore, today Time Inc. announced a new joint-venture with Getty Images for a new Life.com that will will “provide access to the most comprehensive iconic and professional photography collections available anywhere online.”

Quotes from the 2004 Press Release:

Bill Shapiro (Life managing editor): “We wanted to create a magazine that people would feel as well as read. LIFE is designed to help people connect: from the images that capture a world of emotions, to tips and ideas to help people make the time they spend with friends and family more special.”

Andy Blau (Life President): “We are thrilled with the debut issue of LIFE. From the iconic photography to ideas for weekend activities, LIFE helps people get the most of out the two most important days of the week.”

Quotes from the 2008 Press Release:

Bill Shapiro (Life.com editor): “Only three percent of the LIFE archive has been seen by the public. This site will put everything on display. You’ll be able to look at the biggest events of yesterday and the stories making news today with just a couple of clicks.”

Andy Blau (Life President): “Image search is the fastest-growing type of online search, and LIFE.com will satisfy the public’s desire for quality and relevant imagery through a visually pleasing and easy-to-browse website.”

View as a flickr slideshow.

I’ve posted a set of photos on Flickr that follow my seven-day adventure of making a loopback Windsor chair at the John Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC. Never have I worked so hard while on vacation, nor found it so relaxing and fulfilling. Spending 60 or so hours shaping into an 18th-century styled chair something that starts out looking like white oak firewood and a beautiful piece of butternut is — to me, at least — an intensive therapeutic (even meditative) experience. (To each his own, I guess). Pleasant mountain weather, delicious food and an annual gathering of dance-oriented folk musicians at the school during the week we were there also made for a unique experience that my wife and I will remember forever.

Lost photos: I shot this photo from
my office window last April.
Unfortunately, I can’t locate the photos shot
from the same location on April 16, 1998.

My first ever accidental online “citizen journalism” (before the term existed) experience occurred ten years ago, today. Unfortunately, because of the ephemeral nature of the web and certain “wish we knew then what we know now” practices, there is no place for me to point to what I did on that day.

Today, posting “weather photos” is one of those participatory “user-generated-content” activities that even the most up-tight control-freak media company encourages. In the past week or so, I’ve been emailed by at least two big brand online services requesting that I join their network of weather watchers due to my practice of posting photos of weather outside my office window on the 7th floor of a building near Vanderbilt University in Nashville.

Ten years ago today, Will Weaver (then an employee at Hammock, now the big-guy — literally and figuratively — at the e-mail marketing company, emma) and I did a rather remarkably dumb thing. We had an early digital camera and decided to take photos of a tornado that was heading straight towards our building.

All the smart employees (everyone but the two of us) headed to the core of our office building, but we were thinking how great it would be to take some photos and post them on the Hammock.com website. That was a rather out-of-the-box idea as the site was your basic brochure site at the time. Not like today where not only do we have several work-related blogs on the site, but every employee also has a “people page” where they can post information they’d like to share.

Back then, Will and I shot a series of photos (actually, I think Will was “shooting” and I was “photo directing”) of what turned out to be the tornado passing by our office as it touched down in Centennial Park on its way to hitting downtown (including the stadium, then under construction) before doing major widespread damage in East Nashville. (Today, the Nashville Tennessean has a retrospective of the days events.)

After the tornado passed our office building, Will and I and a few other Hammock employees jumped in a car and (I don’t recommend this to anyone — indeed, do not ever do this) drove out to survey the damage in the area immediately surrounding our office. A few blocks from our office, we came-upon what turned out to be one of the most tragic events related to that day. As we watched, a large team of Nashville emergency service and fire department personnel were attempting to save a Vanderbilt student who was pinned beneath a tree in Centennial Park. Unfortunately, the student died later.

When we returned to the office, Will posted the photos at the URL (which no longer works) hammock.com/tornado. Within an hour, CNN.com and other news services were pointing to the photos and the site, which perhaps on a good day got 100 visitors, was (thanks to a robust server) getting tens of thousands of viewers. Sometime during the night, a radio talk show host I had never heard of until then, Art Bell, linked to the photos and started talking about them on his show. (Later I learned that visiting aliens and bad weather were a staple of his show.) The link from Art Bell ended up crashing our servers, as I recall.

Several years ago, we discovered that we had “lost” those photos and any archive of what the site was like on that day. I haven’t actually given up on them turning up somewhere, but searches of the WayBackMachine and other services have not turned up any mirror sites that captured the photos.

One of the reasons I now am obsessed with backing up and organizing digital media — and displaying it on multiple platforms — is my disappointment in having lost that April 16, 1998 moment in time — as experienced by a few of us.

Today, Hammock Inc. would have the photos uploaded to Flickr.com/hammock and YouTube.com/hammockinc instantly and the photos would be backed up on three different servers in our offices and off-site. And, oh yeah, they’d also be posted on that “Out My Office Window” Flickr set. Additionally, we would grant rights to anyone wanting to display the photos for news-coverage purposes.

We’ve come a long way in the past ten years. Today, the city of Nashville has a network of siren alarms that warn people of weather emergencies. Vanderbilt students can be contacted immediately via text message during any type of emergency. And today, the notion of individual witnesses of an event providing personal coverage directly to an audience, and not mediated by a professional news operation, is accepted as a norm — and even “covered” by traditional media.

Later: Laura Creekmore, who then and now lived in East Nashville, recalls the day’s event (she was one of the smart people who went to our building’s basement). I spoke today also with Will Weaver whose recollection is similar to mine. If Lewis Pennock or others are reading this, please comment to fill-in-the-blanks of any details from that day.

[Note: After I posted this, Rob took down his original post and replaced it with a note saying the gallery needed a little work before going live. I've redirected his link to the new post and will update this when he gets the gallery working the way he wants.]

[Note #2: On April 14, Rob re-posted the gallery. I have updated the embed below.]

Rob Haggart, whose blog, A Photo Editor, has become one of my favorite magazine-related “skill” blogs, has put together a slide show (using Flickr) that displays the work of 297 photographers. Explains Rob, “This is a free promo that’s meant to supplement all the other ways you find photographers to hire.”

At Hammock.com, we have a map mash-up where people with whom we work (our clients, free-lance network of contributors, vendors and other friends — even several folks who follow me on Twitter joined in when I invited them to participate with a Christmas Day tweet) are posting photos of themselves wearing a T-shirt we’ve mailed to them. “Every T-shirt has a story” is the theme of this year’s version of our annual tradition. For each five shirt photos added, we’re donating funds for a computer to the One Laptop Per Child Foundation (up to 20 computers). Today, the incredible photo above (larger version) was posted on the map by a Bay-area photographer we work with regularly, Eric Millette. It was such an interesting photo, I emailed Eric to find out more about how he came up with the idea and captured the image. I thought some of my photographry-blogging friends might find interesting the short Q&A I’ve posted on our company’s Custom Media Craft blog.

Technorati Tags: hammockinc, maps, photography

My friend, Josh Hallett, has a great post today about blog posts that are photographs. I was thinking about his post when this photo presented itself to me this afternoon. The shot is of some Nashville buildings awash in sunset gold (coming from behind me) as the moon rises above them. How’d I get that shot? As Woody Allen said, 80% of success is showing up. When it comes to getting good photographs, 80% of success is having a camera with you at all times. In my case, the other 20% comes from being inspired by bloggers like Chris Wage who sees Nashville’s downtown as an ever-changing canvas and palette and Joi Ito who awes me with portraits he captures with the skill of a 1950s-era Life Magazine photo-journalist.

On the Hammock.com “Custom Media Craft Blog,” I’ve posted an item about the new Library of Congress page on Flickr. According to Librarian/Blogger Matt Raymond, “if all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity.”

This is the type of smart use of new media and collaborative communities that I believe more institutions, companies and associations should be experimenting with. Here’s one little example: Does your church or synagogue have old photos gathering dust somewhere? Post them on a Flickr account and invite your members to help you identify who are on the photos. Just think about all the images in old school yearbook files that could be organized via tagging.

In a smaller way, we all have our little Library of Congress archival photos sitting in files (and shoeboxes) somewhere.

Later: Dave Winer has updated his Flickr-fed, RSS-powered screensaver-caster, FlickrFan (see my earlier post) with a feed option for photos from the LOC Flickr account.