Check out these photo book images:
The Flickr Book
Image by Thomas Hawk
Well, it's not here yet, but it's one of the best ideas I've come up with yet, I think.
One of the best overviews of great photography that I've seen is something called The Photo Book published by Phaidon. If you haven't had a chance to check it out you definitely should. It's a great primer on the world's greatest photographers. The idea is pretty simple, 500 photos by 500 photographers. The great ones are all included: Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, more modern greats like Andreas Gursky as well as important historical photo journalism like that of Eddie Adams and his Pulitzer prize winning photograph of the 1968 image of the execution of a Vietcong guerrilla in a Saigon street. The book is modestly priced at around which is a huge bargain compared to other art photography books out there.
So what does this have to do with Flickr? Flickr should publish The Flickr Book. Similar in style to Phaidon's The Photo Book it would also highlight 500 photographs from 500 photographers on Flickr. The kicker is that all of these photographs would come from Flickr's Explore selection and would be selected by a panel of editors at Flickr (Stewart, Caterina, Heather, whoever else, etc.). The quality of the book would be high and the price modest -- also like The Photo Book. A "The Photo Book" Flickr mashup -- very cool.
Ok, and here's the really, really, really best part. All profits from the project could go to one of two places.
First Flickr has already been very supportive of Creative Commons and this is great to see. I license all my photographs via Creative Commons and it is a wonderful way to be able to share your work with the world while still maintaining some degree of control over your images from a commercial sense. This could be a great project to raise additional funds for Creative Commons.
Alternatively, and I actually like this one even better, profits from the project could go to Kids with Cameras, a non-profit organization that teaches the art of photography to marginalized children in communities around the world. I picked up my first SLR when I was about 14 and learning photography as a child has had a profound impact on my life. To be able to provide the tools of photography to poor kids around the world who can't afford them and allow them to use this medium as an outlet and way to explore their world is tremendously empowering from a self confidence and self reflection perspective and provides tremendous emotional value to the disadvantaged.
So what's the downside to this project? Well first off Yahoo! could spend the money to publish a truly fantastic quality book and then nobody buys it (well you probably get at least 500 people and their family who buy it but no one beyond that). I'm not sure on the cost to publish a book like this but I would think it could be a small price to pay for the boatload of publicity that this project would receive and the goodwill directed towards both Yahoo! and Flickr over the project. Yahoo! of course does advertise and could direct people towards the book. They could also provide html code to put an ad for the book on people's blogs or Flickrstreams and get a boatload of free advertising for the book and the project (and for Flickr and Yahoo!). Even if the book failed, they would not lose.
So what's the upside? Tremendously powerful things.
Click here to continue reading: thomashawk.com/2006/01/introducing-flickr-book.html
Book Done and In The Flesh!
Image by Megan Mallen
I don't have kids but I wrote a kids' book!
The Adventures of Capo and Jasper
Written By: Sara Mallen and Megan Mallen
Illustration By: Erin Wainscott
this photo by Weston
