Flickr for Good—A Joint Project

flickrtechsoup.jpgFlickr has caught on not only with individuals, but also with certain organizations. They have discovered that flickr can bring attention to their causes, their members, their goals, and their achievements. Recently, flickr and TechSoup, which helps nonprofits share and learn about technology, began a new program called Flickr for Good.

Flickr for Good will provide 10,000 almost-free pro memberships to registered nonprofit organizations and certain libraries in the United States and Canada. I say “almost-free” because while the memberships themselves are free, there is a small administrative fee of $3 per account.

Many groups have already taken advantage of this offer. For example, The Nature Conservancy has a flickr site that ran a digital photography contest that received more than 11,000 entries. Interplast, a group that provides free reconstructive surgery to children in underdeveloped areas, shows before and after photos of patients, as well as images of their own workers. Oxfam sponsored a Starbucks photo petition showing images of people holding signs that said “I support Ethiopian Coffee Farmers.”

Organizations can use flickr to publicize themselves and their work,

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Airsick: Short film from 20,000 still images

Airsick

As part of its Earth Hour feature, The Toronto Star is hosting a short film created to highlight human impact on the environment and specifically on the air we breathe.

Twenty days. Twenty thousand still images. A single message. Toronto Star photographer Lucas Oleniuk captures the issue of global warming in a video created entirely by using still images.

Because it was made with still images, the entire film consists of time-lapse sequences. It’s a beautiful example of time-lapse photography. Photojojo recently did a good tutorial on time-lapse you should check out if you are interested in giving it a try.

Watch video

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Digital Imaging Contest Winners

pix.jpgIf you would like to be inspired by photographs, take a look at the winners in the PDNOnline Digital Imaging Contest 13. I was surprised not only at the variety of work displayed there, but also at how appealing many of the images were.

PDNOnline is a monthly magazine for professional photographers, and I feared that all the images might be just ads or promotional pieces. However, photographers competed in a number of categories:

  • Advertising Campaigns
  • Portraits/Celeb/Music
  • Travel/Lifestyle
  • Fashion/Beauty
  • Personal Work
  • New Talent
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    PhotoWorks Offers Retail Outlet for Photographers

    PhotoWorks, which began life as Seattle Film Works, started out decades ago using movie film to make prints and slides. Today, many know them as an online photo sharing site, which offers prints and custom photo items, such as books, calendars, cards, and other gift items. I’ve often used this company. I buy prints from them, and last year, I made a book from old scanned family pictures.

    Photoworks StorefrontNow this company offer Storefronts, a retail outlet for photographers, where the photographers can create and sell their own photo-related gifts. Right now, you can sell only books from this site. Soon you’ll be able to sell all sorts of products, including images and items that use images, such as coffee mugs, calendars, and so forth. In addition, PhotoWorks plans to offer widgets that will allow users to display their products on their personal websites.

    You choose a user name, which gets incorporated into the URL. Choose carefully, since you cannot change this name later. PhotoWorks will take care of hosting your images, payments, and shipping. You can then have the proceeds either deposited into a Paypal account, or credited to your PhotoWorks account.

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    Patches for Pictures

    Recently I read an article about two new tools that are being developed to help digital photographers remove items from their images. Suppose you had taken picture of a great small town main street, but when saw the image you realized that three parked cars obscured the view and just looked messy. If only you could remove them! However, if you did, you would be left with a void.

    Apparently, you are not alone. At least two teams are trying to solve this problem. One is developing a scene-completion algorithm that searches for a patch for your picture. It quickly scans thought a database of millions of images on Flickr, looking for images of the same subject, taken from the same position, with the light falling from the same direction. The algorithm narrows down all the choices first to 200 and finally to 20 or so. Ultimately, user are given a choice and select the one that looks best to them.

    Another team is trying to create a library of clip art, taken from the Label Me library of images. This library could supply patches for missing picture parts.

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    Stock Photo Superseller!

    Those of you who are interested in stock photography might want to read more about Lise Gagne, a freelancer who recently set a new record for stock photography sales. Lise has sold more than half a million photos to iStockPhoto.com. To learn some of the secrets of her phenomenal success, read this interview with her. Although she credits much of her success to a background in Web/multimedia design, most readers will also be impressed by her strong work ethic, her analytical abilities, and her sense of fun. Perhaps it is this latter skill that makes her scenes appear so happy, natural, and relaxed, attributes mentioned by several of her clients.

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    Google adds facial recognition to image search

    Ars Technica is reporting that Google has quietly added basic facial recognition features to their image search. There is no user-interface for it yet and it can currently only be accessed by appending &imgType=face to an image search. Here’s an example (I’m on page 2): John Watson

    Still in the experimental stages, this would obviously be a killer feature to add to Picasa and Picasa Web Albums, Google’s photo management application. It would be huge to be able to identify people in just a few photos in your collection and then be able to search for all photos with those same people. Riya.com has had something like this for a while with its “People” tab.

    Google’s addition of this feature is a shot across the bow of every other photo sharing service out there. I can only speculate that Flickr, Smug Mug, and other photo sharing services are working on similar features. They’d better be because this is the sort of thing that will make sorting through thousands of photos of people much easier than it has ever been before. I for one would love to be able to sort out pictures of just my kids,

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    An up-to-date photograph can save a child’s life

    Smilesafe ID cardTomorrow is National Missing Children’s Day. According to a 1999 study, over 2,000 children are reported missing on a daily basis. The National Center for Missing and Exploited children (NCMEC) says, “One of the most important tools for law enforcement to use in the case of a missing child is an up-to-date, good-quality photograph.” Lifetouch School Portraits, in partnership with the NCMEC, are offering the Smilesafe Kids program which includes two free ID cards for each child photographed at participating schools. Find out more about what you can do to help at the NCMEC’s website missingkids.com.

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    Kodak knows how old you are

    I don’t normally cover news items but I thought this one was particularly interesting. Kodak has a patent on a technology that can determine a person’s age by measuring the red-eye in a photograph. Finally, a use for red-eye other than making people look like demons. Just think, in the future, instead of asking people how old they are, businesses of all kinds may just flash you in the face with a camera. A possible use outlined in Kodak’s patent is to be able to sell people age-appropriate advertising with their photo prints. [via DailyTech]

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