Lincoln, Nebraska ca 1942. When cars were cars and American.
(Photo: John Vachon, Library of Congress on Flickr Commons. No known copyright restrictions).
Category Archives: Photography
Brekksak # 5: Striglede, flittige sekretærer
Det er helg, og godt å se på andre arbeide!
(Foto: George Eastman Houses samling på Flickr Commons. Ingen kjente opphavsrettsrestriksjoner.)
Se alle brekksaker.
World at 4 am
Watch — the stunning results of Karen Strunks’ 4am Project. Many of the photos taken April 4 at 0400. (via Journalism.co.uk).
Google’s blind spot
Virginia Heffernan points to Google’s blind spot as a media company: they lack essential competence in the craft of editing. Her example is the disappointing presentation of the fantastic Life photo archive collection:
When Google first announced on its blog that the Life archive was up, it seemed like another Google good deed: rescuing the name of Life magazine and the glorious 20th-century tradition of still photojournalism. But Google has failed to recognize that it can’t publish content under its imprint without also creating content of some kind: smart, reported captions; new and good-looking slide-show software; interstitial material that connects disparate photos; robust thematic and topical organization. All this stuff is content, and it requires writers, reporters, designers and curators. Instead, the company’s curatorial imperative, as usual, is merely “make it available.”
Frames of reality
The name of a social networking site (using Ning) linking Israeli and Gaza journalists:
With the use of the site, the photographers have been exchanging pictures that they shot over the past three weeks, each photographer in his or her close surroundings, and discussing professional matters against the background of the military campaign.
Berlin, 1939
Troops parade past the Reichsluftfahrtministerium (and Generalfeldmarschall Göring) in Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse on March 1, 1939. The photo is one of about 100.000 donated by Germany’s Bundesarchiv to Wikimedia Commons and being uploaded today. The photos are published under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 Germany license.
UPDATE: More details about the cooperation on Spiegel Online.
The Life archive and copyright
King Haakon VII of Norway, photographed by David E. Scherman of Life Magazine outside London in 1942.
That the Life photo archive now is available on Google is fantastic news and very impressive. You can sit for hours browsing this treasure. But it’s surprising that there is so little explanation about copyright issues to find here. © Time Inc. is stamped on each photo, and Time says they “are available for free for personal and research purposes”. Does this mean also republishing on personal blogs, like I have taken the liberty to do here? Probably not. But Time knows that people will display the photos on websites, and they won’t go after bloggers who use one or a few images. Since they are selling prints, it’s actually in Time’s interest to have the photos republished on non-commercial websites. A good example of the foggy state of copyright today… The elegant solution here would of course be a Creative Commons license, but maybe there are other obstacles to that?
Another issue is that copyright maybe has expired on some of these photos. And while we’re in photo mode, Flickr Commons continues the good work that started with the Library of Congress photos.
Poverty and dignity
Have a look at Jonas Bendiksen and Magnum’s production The Places We Live, an online adaptation of the project where Bendiksen visits slum dwellers in Venezuela, Kenya, India and Indonesia. The production is introduced on Magnum’s blog (and I wish they would start offering embedding of photos — hey, it’s not as dangerous as you think).
Abkhazia in pictures
Jonas Bendiksen visited the place in 2005 and made a photo essay:“A vacation in a non-existent country”.
Getty & Flickr
Soon, we Flickr users can earn some money on our photos if Getty Images editors like them. So better hurry up and post some new pictures? Well, there are some issues here that are discussed quite interestingly in the comment section. One potential problem that struck me immediately, as well as commenter Stephen:
I wonder what effect this will have on whether Flickr photographers elect to post their images using the Creative Commons license.