June 2, 2009 @ 11:57 pm
Photo by Jack Delano (Library of Congress archives)
The stunning photo above is one of the many notable mentions in the 2008 Wikimedia Commons Picture of the Year contest. If you missed the previous year’s winners, you can download them all in a zip file at this link. Ahh, that’s why I love Wikimedia. :)
May 10, 2009 @ 1:18 am
Steve Lambert has a small side project called Arrow Sign in Los Angeles where he places a large sign with an improvised message into random scenes in LA. The picture above is from this set and it’s called “Sand Ocean Sky – The Commons”.
January 4, 2009 @ 1:12 pm
I simply love the photographs in this Flickr Commons set from the George Eastman House of pictures taken by Nickolas Muray.
Nickolas Muray was a Hungary-born photographer who had a very successful career as a photographer. He was known for his celebrity portraits in magazines during the 1920’s and 1930’s before moving on to work in advertising. He is one of the photographers responsible for establishing the aesthetic of the modern color advertisement. Of course, advertisements today don’t resemble his work anymore but it’s fun to look back and see his brilliant lighting technique that gave his photos a very distinct look.
December 16, 2008 @ 5:46 pm
Yesterday, Flickr added a few wonderful collections from the New York Public Library image archives to Flickr Commons. If you’re a sucker for old and vintage photos of New York and its citizens, then you’ll find some great photographic works in the NYPL photostream. The collections are graciously categorized into sets (16 of them at the moment), so you can skip around and browse whatever topic you want without having to filter them out yourself.
My favorite is the “Changing New York, 1935-1938″ set. Look at the Chelsea Hotel in this photo. Man, I could waste away the rest of my day in this collection.
November 13, 2008 @ 3:29 pm
Wow! Look at this old photo of The Galleries Victoria in Sydney from the Powerhouse Museum photo collection on the Commons on Flickr. It’s amazing that this building still looks exactly the same here as it does today (see Google Street View for a comparison).
Anyway, the Powerhouse Museum has a pretty fantastic set of old photos of Sydney, Australia from a time when horse-drawn buggies still filled the streets. Go look at them now!
November 13, 2008 @ 3:23 pm
Flickr recently announced that the Australian War Memorial has been added to the collection at Flickr Commons in honor of the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I.
The addition of the Australian War Memorial photos now puts the total number of participating institutions at 15. Awesome! If you like old-timey photos you should just go and browse the collection.
