Have I mentioned that I've become a flickr member? I started when I wanted to post the pics from last semester's "Religion and Theater" class final showing, then got myself a "pro" membership for Christmas. Flickr.com, in case you don't know, is a photo sharing website. (My site.) I first heard about it at a workshop on new technologies and the liberal arts, and was intrigued to learn that most of its members are not in the US. It's full of pictures of just about anything you could ask for (I found a good many of Spanish Shawls, for instance, or "The last trial of Judas Iscariot," or Mount Macedon, or houses on our street in Brooklyn...) - and many of them are really beautiful. (Like the amazing woodblock print-like one above, taken by someone named Jon Wild in Manchester, England.) It's by turns wonderful and humbling to see how much beauty there is in the world, and how many eyes - with lenses - are seeing it.The other thing about flickr that has me hooked is that it's a mutual appreciation society. Members can comment on each other's pictures, and all the comments without exception are positive, friendly, enthusiastic! (Very different from, say, youtube.) And when you leave a comment on someone's picture, they inevitably do you the courtesy of following the link back to your photo stream and looking around to find a picture they can say something nice about. And on and on. Everyone's so nice it's almost unbelievable... My first experience of the utopia of the (literally worldwide) web!
