Steven can plan

Contrary to popular belief, Flickr is not a stock photo* website with a cornucopia of beautiful and relevant photographs of people, objects, and infrastructure you need for your professional or academic project.

I have heard several stories, and witnessed on multiple occasions, workers and students appropriating photos they find on Flickr .

Flickr seems to have, on average, more interesting, and higher quality photos than other photo sharing websites, including Picasa, Photobucket, MySpace, and Facebook. But Flickr enables its users to display the rights visitors have to use their photos (if any). These are rights granted to content creators by the federal government the moment such content is created. These rights can then be sub-granted to others through licensing. Flickr users can identify their photos to visitors as having one of the Creative Commons licenses, or reserving all rights (this means visitors shouldn’t even download the photo to their computer).

A couple of months ago I started watermarking my photos on Flickr because I didn’t want someone to use my photo without following the rules of the Creative Commons license. (All of my photos have the Creative Commons-Attribution-Share Alike-Non-commercial license ascribed – this license allows anyone to use your work as long as they don’t make money by using it, they attribute you, the creator, and they share their work in the same fashion.) The photo above shows two uses of my photos where neither myself or my employer (who commissioned the photos) are credited.

This scheme also makes it easy for photographers on Flickr to share their work widely. In April, a professional association emailed me to ask if they could use a photo I posted on my Flickr photostream in an upcoming publication. The photo was clearly listed as having the Creative Commons license I described above. They didn’t need my explicit permission to use the photo. I understand, though, that the license permissions displayed on Flickr may not satisfy corporate or organization policy, and a written agreement is needed. That’s fine – when you require such an agreement, don’t then make it difficult for the original content creator (myself) to agree to it. The organization wanted me to print a document, sign it, and fax it to them. Or I could open the PDF agreement in Adobe Illustrator and attach my digital signature and email it to them.

Visitors to Flickr who are looking for high-quality, desirable photos to use in their own works should respect the licenses listed on every photo’s page. When a Flickr users reserves all rights to the photo, visitors can consider contacting the user for special permission to use the photo. Using someone else’s work without their permission or against their preferences is also rude and unprofessional.

*Stock photos are those taken expressly to be used in other people’s works and the photographers have agreed to either a payment given at once, or by royalties. iStockPhoto and Getty Images are major stock photo warehouses.

I have lots of family who live in the Phoenix Valley in southern Arizona. I take a trip out there annually to visit, usually around Thanksgiving or Christmas. I’ll be leaving in a week and I haven’t yet planned what I’m going to do. Neither of my siblings will be coming at the same time (odd), so I’m going to have a lot of me time. I know the Phoenix area has had some of the worst foreclosures and job losses in the country, and maybe I can try to find visual, apparent indications of this (not sure how, though).

I’ll have a car, a bike, or a light rail train!

So far, I’m thinking of these things:

• Photoshoot of the construction of the new Bombardier People Mover at the PHX SkyHarbor airport. When the light rail opened last year in December (see my photos), the connection between the Valley Metro station at Washington and 44th and the northern terminal of the people mover was this disconnected, unadorned viaduct. I hear construction has progressed at a steady rate on the $1 billion, 1 mile system (keep in mind that the entire light rail system of 20 miles cost $1.4 billion to construct).
• Visit the Phoenix Trolley Museum. I found this just now through someone’s Flickr photostream next to a photo of the people mover construction area. I’ve never heard of the place, and I don’t know anything about it right now, but it has at least one train, so why not go!
• Visit Tucson! I’ve heard that the University of Arizona, Tucson campus, is very bike friendly (my former coworker, Christy, studied there). The Tucson Bike Lawyer keeps everyone apprised of the local comings and goings. The city is a 2.5 hour drive so I can easily handle it by myself in a day (or perhaps my dad or one of my cousins would come with). I don’t know what there is to do, but I get a lot of joy from walking and taking photos.
• Lastly, I’m thinking of visiting Los Angeles. I’ve never been to L.A. and I want to go to test ride a bike I’ve recently started researching. I still have a big soft spot for Dutch bicycles, but the Yuba Mundo has caught my eye as a bike that can handle just as much cargo, costs less, and I can customize it with many Dutch bike attributes (like internal gearing, brakes, and dynamo-powered lighting). A Chinatown bus is $60 roundtrip, but the duration is 6 hours. Also, Amtrak no longer serves Phoenix but does stop in “nearby” Maricopa (not the county).

If you live around here and want to show me something neat, I am interested.

jack london inn
Originally uploaded by akagoldfish

Amtrak California trains run in the street through Jack London Square in Oakland, California.

Street running is a common sight around the world. This particular spot has Amtrak, commuter and freight trains sharing the street with all other “normal” users. RailPictures contributors have over 2,000 photos uploaded (search by category). See more photos from this area from El Cobrador and pbo31.

Do you recognize this building?

This building doesn’t have a memorable name so I often forget it. The 105-foot crown lights up at night making it the most visible building in Chicago, competing with the Sears Tower in the colored lights spectacle throughout the year.

According to Emporis, “311 South Wacker Drive is the tallest building in the world known only by its street address.”

I don’t think it’s known very well, though. Perhaps if the tenants gave it a name, more people would know what to call it – civic buffs, budding planners, and longtime residents love to show they’re up to snuff when it comes to talking about their city, but they usually take a pass on this one, opting instead to call attention to the UBS Tower three blocks away on Madison, with its eye-catching lobby. (Architecture and design students around the world will know this concrete skyscraper before the average Chicago learns its “name.”)

I bet, though, that you’re more likely to find 311 S Wacker before you find the Chicago Board of Trade building.

I went to the top floor of UIC’s University Hall and took a few hundred shots with my Olympus E-500 digital SLR. That was 3 years. I came across them while switching photo libraries, iPhoto to Aperture. From this high up vantage point that’s removed from the skyscraper core, you can see different spaces, shapes, and interactions.