Pursuits : Elizabeth Thomsen

Photojojo has a great service for Flickr users — you sign up, authorize access to your Flickr account, and twice a month they send an e-mail message with a few of your photographs from a year earlier. The selection apparently uses Flickr’s interestingness formula, so you tend to get photographs that got a lot of views, comments, notes, etc.

Of course, this service doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do yourself — it’s certainly easy enough to search your archives by date or browse through your sets to find pictures from last Halloween, last Thanksgiving, or whatever. I probably spend more time going through my old photographs than most people, all 4,000+ of them. But there’s something quite nice about getting these messages and see a little gallery of favorites from the previous year. Sometimes it makes me happy, and sometimes sad. Sometimes it reminds me to get in touch with a friend or family member and say something like “I was just thinking about the day we went to the orchard and bought that big pumpkin last year, remember how much fun we had?” Often it makes me want to go out and take more pictures.
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I started another new Flickr group, this one celebrating the simple beauty of the Beach Rose, or Rosa Rugosa. I associate these flowers with the North Shore, Cape Cod and Nantucket, but they are actually native to Northeast Asia : Japan, Korea, southeastern Siberia, and northeastern China. They produce beautiful, fragrant blossoms in the summer, followed by shiny red rose hips in the early autumn.

Beach Roses — Visit or join the Flickr group
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I love the new version of the Flickr slideshow — I especially like the fact that it easy to share and embed. Here’s one from my “Favorites” set :

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The Democratic National Convention is about to open in Denver, and I feel like I have a role in the event…not politically, but artistically.

A couple of years ago, I was at a conference in Denver, and I stepped outside between meetings and took a couple of photographs of “I See What You Mean,” Lawrence Argent’s sculpture of a big blue bear that peers through the window of the Convention Center. Not great photographs — I was rather disappointed at the time that the blue came out looking darker and duller than it really is. But I posted them on Flickr anyway. Good librarian that I am, I included the name of the artist and the sculpture in my description, with a link to the Denver city government’s page describing the work.
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I used to think I was an observant person, and a curious one. But since I joined Flickr, I realize how unobservant I have actually been all my life, how much I’ve missed. I look at things so much more closely and appreciatively when I’m taking pictures, or even when I am thinking about taking pictures. And I know a lot less than I thought I did, too. When I try to add appropriate titles, descriptions and tags for my pictures, I realize how little I know about the world around me. I don’t know the names of flowers, trees or birds, and I can’t describe architectural styles or features.
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When I first started reading about Project 365, for which people commit to taking one photograph a day, it sounded like fun and something that might be interesting, but I thought it would be pretty easy for me. I take a lot of photographs — I have over 3,000 on Flickr.

So in the fall of 2006, I decided that I’d try it, starting on January 1, 2007. I told all my friends, read a little more about it, looked at other people’s collections, and was all set to go. But on New Year’s Day, I went to my sister’s house over a hundred miles away, and somehow left my handbag behind, with my wallet, my phone and my camera. I probably could have figured out some way to take a picture, but by the time I got home, it was late, I was tired, and I just wanted to go to bed. I could have started a few days late when I got my camera back — there’s no magic about starting January 1 — I didn’t want to. I decided that 2007 was “ruined” for Project 365, and that I needed to wait for 2008.
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I’ve started a new Flickr group for photographs of the work of American sculptor Bela Lyon Pratt, 1867-1917.

Pratt’s best-known works include the statues of Art and Science outside the Boston Public Library in Copley Square, the statue of Nathaniel Hawthorne in Salem, Massachusetts, and the statue of Edward Everett Hale in the Boston Public Garden.

Bela Lyon Pratt — Here’s the link to the Flickr group

Bela Lyon Pratt Links

• Bela Pratt — Wikipedia article
• Bela Lyon Pratt — Artcyclopedia article
• Bela Lyon Pratt: Overlooked Designer of Two Underrated Coins — Article by Ed Reiter on the Professional Coin Graders website

Cocktail Parasols — Yesterday I started a new Flickr group for pictures of those festive little paper umbrellas that are used to decorate cocktails and other drinks. The pictures can show the parasols in their native habitat — sticking out of drinks — or can be as creative or random as you’d like, as long as the photograph includes a miniature paper parasol.
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I love this photograph. I think it’s bright and cheerful, I love the detail of the center, and I love the colors. I especially love the delicate brushlike copper highlighting on the yellow petals.

It’s not the best picture I’ve ever taken. It’s not even the best picture of a sunflower that I’ve ever taken. But it’s the best one I took yesterday.
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I first became interested in Yelp.com while looking at reviews of libraries, and I posted about this at my professional blog : Yelp and Other Local Information Sites. But then I joined Yelp, and got really interested in adding listings and reviews for local businesses, especially those small, independent businesses that are important to me, some of which are in my own neighborhood.
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