Flickr, a photo journalism tool?
By marcus • Feb 12th, 2005 • Category: ramblings •While reading the New York Times today (on-line), they have a lead article on the opening day of Christo’s Gates in Central Park. Why is the NY Times using an AP article, come on guys I know you have reporters to cover this stuff in your own city. At least the photos are from staff photographers. Sorry, I’m getting a little off track.
My need to see bright orange fabric was not satiated with the few photos in their slideshow, I wanted to see more. So I turned to flickr, describing flickr as simply a site to share photos is under valuing it. The site is more a community, with an elaborate system of cataloging and tagging images, allowing comments and fun notes.
A quick search of their tags for gates and it turned up several pages of photos, which is growing as I write this article. The publishing masses with digital cameras can produce more and faster than most newspapers and web sites.
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it’s evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world


[...] This is not the first time I’ve been interested in an event I heard on the radio and wanted to see a photo of it. The next time I’m interested, I might just go to Flickr first instead of hoping The Chronicle has a photo online of it. [...]