Dennis Dunleavy

Library of Congress uses Web 2.0 to build awareness of historical images

Matt Raymond, Director of Communications at the Library of Congress, had a brilliant idea. Instead of making the public come to the LOC Web site to look at historical images, why not make the pictures go to where people who love photography live -- on Flickr.

Recently, the LOC posted more than 3,000 of its images on to a Flickr site called The Commons. Raymond hopes that traffic to the site will generate interest and information for the LOC collection, which now holds 14 million images.

LOC caption reads: Color guard of Negro engineers, Ft. Belvoir(?), [Va.]

Although anyone can view the pictures, Flickr members have access to post comments and add tags that will help make identifying the images better. 

According to Flickr:

There are two main aims to The Commons project, starting with the pilot: firstly, to increase exposure to the amazing content currently held in the public collections of civic institutions around the world, and secondly, to facilitate the collection of general knowledge about these collections, with the hope that this information can feed back into the catalogues, making them richer and easier to search.

The idea of taking this collection to the Web 2.0 is not only good for the LOC is a terrific public relations strategy.  As Raymond notes:

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

Caption Reads: Delano, Jack (1914-1997)
Children gathering potatoes on a large farm, vicinity of Caribou, Aroostook County, Me. Schools do not open until the potatoes are harvested. Oct. 1940.

There are more than 40 comments for the image above, which suggests that niche communities as Flickr become unified around images that share commonalities or historical significance. Many of the comments share life experiences related to rural American life and having to work as children.

Just by looking at several of the images and the comments they generate suggests that the LOC objectives in posting the images is very effective.

 

The Mexican Suitcase: Exploring Capa's legacy

Zone Zero has published a terrific essay and presentation by Trisha Ziff about a suitcase of lost negatives belonging to Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and Chim Seymour. This is well worth the time reading. Ziff's essay sheds light on not only the value of the images, but also the relationships between friends in a time of war.

Editing as important in the digital age as in the past

With all the additions that digital photography brings, people still need to understand the importance of editing pictures. Dave Johnson of PC World Canada, has a good article about editing as an integral part of digital photography. Johnson discusses what he calls editing tricks including,  color balance,  exposure correction, perspective cropping,  and eliminating noise.

Nuance remains critical to emotional imagery

As a culture we have come to expect more out of the pictures we see. We are
far more visually sophisticated than previous generations.  In fact, we demand
that the images we consume each day -- many of them from advertising -- stand
out. The pictures we see, some 5,000 to 6,000 daily, actively compete for
out attention.

To make something out of nothing can lead to confusion

Photo Credit: AFP/Farooq Naeem

There are times when visual reportage gets lost when a photojournalist takes more
artistic license than convention permits. There is nothing wrong with art, but
conceptualizations that illustrate rather than report should be labeled as such.
In this image, the relationship between what is pictured and what is explained in
the caption is troublesome.

The caption reads:

Pakistani soldiers in Swat valley in February 2008. A pro-Taliban leader in Pakistan's tribal area said that Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and fugitive Taliban militant leader Mullah Omar were "not enemies of Pakistan.                                       

Not only is the caption misleading, so to is the picture. What do these soldiers have to
do with an unnamed pro-taliban leader showing support for Osama bin Laden?

In analyzing this image the photographer appears not to follow any of the normal
conventions prescribed to visually reporting the news, that is unless pinhole cameras
are making a comeback.

It is also interesting to consider how much of today's media, including wire services, feel as compelled to entertain us as they are to inform us. The logic at work here seems to suggest
that if a picture visually dynamic and able to capture a viewer's attention than it somehow fails. This does not mean that images shouldn't be carefully and artfully composed and technically
well executed, but images such as this one indicate a trend away from straight heads-up
news photography.

One interpretation of this image leads to a more aesthetic reading, something along postmodernist lines of thinking. However, that is not, in my opinion, what visual reportage has traditionally been about. The rhetorical power of such an image leans toward opinion rather than
presenting fact. What we view here is a scene that has been altered by technique to produce something more interesting than what it really is -- a group of seven soldiers near a bunker somewhere.

All images traffic in ambiguity. That is, unless you are actually witness to an event, a representation will always hold a slightly different meaning for individual viewers. In this case, the tolerance for ambiguity is constrained by the straight forwarding wording of the caption -- words that seem to have very little connection to what is represented in the image. Moreover, this image possesses strong symbolism in that the soldiers are trapped by a circular field of black.

In some ways, the image is a reminder of earlier circular images like this one from the late 1880s.

Photo Credit: Photomuse

Top 100 freelance blogs announced at Bootstraper

Interested in how people are struggling to survive in a downsized and consolidated media world? One word. Freelancing. Today, a photographer, writer, designer, or editor must be as accomplished in business as they are in photography or any other skill set. Bootstrapper provides a comprehensive listing of some of the more interesting and popular blogs that will appeal to freelancers. One of my favorite sites, Freelance Switch, is also mentioned.

Change is bittersweet

This Janis & Arlo cartoon reminds me that many people are beginning
to accept the inevitable decline of the daily newspaper. This week, a
colleague wrote to say that his newspaper was once again facing another
wave of layoffs and after nearly two decades he could soon find himself
out of a job. The cartoon is a painful reminder of the lost of tradition in our
culture.
two decades, we have seen a robust industry

Driving on water

Commercialism was on center stage, or in a pond, at the Honda Classic
PGA tournament  recently in Florida. 

Some pictures are still worth a thousand words

photo credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

It's comical to see the poetic justice of journalists convening in an men's
room to report on one stop in the democratic presidential campaign.  The
media handlers for Hillary Clinton's campaign must have had some fun
when deciding to set up a press room in a john.

Photography 2.0

Technological advances in digital photography are constantly challenging the notion of what photography is. Some of the latest innovations include refocus, high-dynamic range and 3D images. There may also be cameras that take pictures only when someone is smiling or isn't blinking.

Stephen Shankland of C/Net notes, "Researchers and companies are starting to stretch their wings by taking advantage of what a computer can do with sensor data either within the camera or on a full-fledged PC."

This shift signifies the advance of photography from an era of convention to one of computation. In a Photo 2.0 world the experience of making pictures will be governed not by chance but through calculation. Ultimately, this revolution in photographic technologies will not only change the way we make pictures but also the way we see.