in anticipation of flickr

I love photos (taking them, viewing them, sharing them), and "making" things with them (though I never seem to get around to actually printing photos... Am I doing so less because I'm spending more time staring at my computer screen than I am at, or within, my home walls?), so I'm very excited about our flickr lesson.

In anticipation, I happened upon this incredible site with lots of links to applications that do really fun photo-y things for free:

http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/

Here's one example (featuring my boyfriend Brent and friend Megan):














I just spent way too long fooling around with another fun tool, the Magazine Cover maker. See my new profile picture for the fruit of my labor.

Rebecca Blood mentions in her blog posting on flickr (http://www.rebeccablood.net/archive/2006/04/how_flickr_singlehandedly_inve_1.html):

"Flickr slideshow of photos of the French employment riots [Flash required] amply demonstrates that, on Flickr at least, collaborative photojournalism is thriving. That success is at least as much a product of Flickr itself as it is a product of the contributing photographers."

It is clear to me, too, that photojournalism is thriving (as always, I remind my students--and myself--not to believe everything I see in shared photos, no matter how many words they're worth. I'm really interested in consider what trends are born in response to new technologies, and which technologies are devised in response to an expressed need/interest. My guess is that it's almost impossible to tell, and probably irrelevant. Maybe.

Speaking of photo editing software, I just learned (from NYCSLIST) that Sumo Paint is an online image editor that opens in your browser and does most of the things you’d want from Photoshop for free: http://sumopaint.com/web/

Neat!

As I'm reading more about flickr and the "mashups" out there, I'm increasingly excited about the whole thing. My one hesitation, though, is the idea of putting all of my personal photos . Privacy settings, sure, but... they'll be out there for people who know more tricks than I do to access. This general unease is the single reason I've not yet uploaded all of my photos to flickr (my other big fear being that I somehow lose all of my precious private photos thanks to a busted hard drive and a failure to adequately back them up).

A few other reading notes:
- Gail Shea Grainger's "Dewey Browse"
- Howard Rheingold: "My thinking is that activism, to be successful, needs to be visible." (http://www.smartmobs.com/2005/08/16/flickr-based-smartmobbing-the-ministry-of-reshelving)
- This social bookmarking tools site proposes appealing lessons
- Should I create a librarian trading card? Here.
- making sense of tagging / labeling / bookmarking: Lee Rainie argues that tagging is more tailored to individual needs than Dewey's more all-inclusive system.
- I'm not tempted to "label" my blog posts... yet. I will consider if/how it might be of use to me.