OVER THE COURSE of 100,000 visitors to my Flickr photostreams, I've learned that you get more out of visitors who take away your images than you do from those who laud you for your composition. That's why most of my Flickr photostream is licensed under the Creative Commons Share-Alike agreement. I learned the value of the Creative Commons when Lawrence Lessig visited Ireland several years ago. Due to his influence, dozens of students at Tipperary Institute now think CC instead of © when they display their work. Today, I learned that this spirit is spreading into yet-another generation.
Some of my photos from southeast Ireland now appear in a primary schools' Imagebank devised by Scoilnet. Students and teachers snap and share photos of their local area under a Creative Commons Licence. The photos are all categorised. The image bank provides teachers and students with access to digital images of things that they may want to use in an educational context.
If you have photos of your area and you would like to share them, label them with a Creative Commons licence and your snaps could be credited and remediated by thousands of students in the years ahead. I think Irish bloggers need to lead the way in this kind of venture because most professional photographers are sensitive at best and precocious at worst. Said another way, you could not ask organisations representating professional photojournos in Ireland for this kind of community assistance. It's alright for people to set their own limits and define their own spaces. I feel best when sharing.
Imagebank in Alpha and ropey mode. Developed for the NCTE, an agency of the Irish Department of Education and Science funded by Irish euro.
