crowdsourced

Satellite Boom to ‘Wreak Havoc’ on Astrophotography, NASA Says

As more and more satellites are being launched into space, reflected light from these objects is causing increased sky pollution and issues for astronomers and astrophotographers. Now NASA is asking the public for help in monitoring this growing issue, and all you need to do is shoot smartphone photos of the light streaks in the night sky.

ON1 is Crowdsourcing Ideas to Create the Ultimate RAW Processor

The photo software company ON1 drummed up some excitement back in April by announcing Photo RAW, the first new RAW processing software to be released in a decade. To make sure the software is exactly what photographers want, ON1 has just launched The Photo RAW Project, an effort to crowdsource the best ideas for what the software should be like.

Time-Lapses Made with Photos Mined from the Web

Time-lapses are usually created with one or more cameras by one or more photographers working together to document a particular subject, but now scientists have created a new method of time-lapse creation that uses photographs found on the Internet.

Mapillary is Building a Crowdsourced Street View with User Submitted Photos

Google's well-known Street View service is one of several monumental efforts to document the world's travel routes through ground-level photos. These projects generally use fancy camera rigs on cars, backpacks, and even camels to capture their images.

Mapillary is a startup that's trying to do things a little differently. Instead of taking the grunt work of photo-taking upon itself, the service is building a crowdsourced Street View competitor using photos submitted by users.

Timera Allows Users to Create Then & Now Photographs with Ease on iOS and Android

Timera 2 is the second iteration of a rather unique then-and-now compositing app that crowdsources photographs from around the globe and allows you to easily document the changes that have taken place in the world around you over the decades.

Through a massive user-generated database of historical images, appropriately geotagged to their location, Timera users can create unique then-and-now photos by overlaying the archive photo with a photo they just took.

Leevia is a Petition Site that Understands and Leverages the Power of Photography

The number of words a picture may or may not be worth aside, there’s something intrinsically more powerful about a cause when it is backed up by quality photography.

This is the thought at the foundation of a new website called Leevia, a photography-driven petition platform that draws inspiration from movements like the Bring Back Our Girls campaign that spread through social media like wildfire.

LASD Creates Portal for Submitting Crowd-Sourced Photographic Evidence

With cameras as ubiquitous as they are, citizen-provided evidence is becoming more and more substantial when it comes to acquitting or incriminating victims in court. However, no matter how much information is captured, it’s rare for it all to be seen by those in charge of making the critical decisions, as there isn’t an effective way to submit or sort through the media.

To change that, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department has launched a new online app, built around Amazon’s Web Services, to allow anyone to submit photo and video evidence of incidences.

Community-Sourced Photos of New York City’s Diverse Signage

New York City offers a plethora of photographic opportunity. Massive architecture alongside a vibrant and diverse population makes for plenty of work for photographers of all types. But have you ever thought about the myriad signage and typography that New York has to offer?

Matthew Anderson and Daniel Hunninghake did, and so they created NYCType back in 2007 to highlight it. The site brings together photos of New York City's signage under once virtual roof.

Reddit and 4chan Working to ID Boston Bomber Using Available Photos

We reported yesterday that the FBI has issued an open call for photographs and videos that may help provide clues in the Boston Marathon bombing case. Since that time, investigators have begun circulating photos of two "possible suspects" spotted in images of the scene, suggesting that analyzing crowdsourced images has indeed been useful in this case.

It's not just government law enforcement that is attempting to use public photographs to identify the attacker, though: the large online communities Reddit and 4chan have also begun carrying out their own crowdsourced photo analysis.

Citizen Journalism Photo Agency Demotix Snatched Up by Corbis

Corbis, one of the largest photo agencies in the world, has agreed to acquire Demotix, a crowd-sourced citizen journalism photo agency that was founded in 2008. Corbis had already picked up a piece of the young agency through an investment last year, but now it has decided to purchase the whole company outright. The acquisition price was not disclosed.

Quirky New iOS Camera App Gives Your Photos Witty Captions

Frank Said What? is an amazing new iOS camera app that can accurately describe any photo you show it. It's not just smart, it's witty too: "Frank" will usually give your photographs humorous captions. Some will make you smile, while others will make you laugh out loud.

Photo Project to Capture a Snapshot of the Entire World at One Moment in Time

There have been a number of projects in the past that asked people to capture videos and photographs all over the world during a single day. Montblanc wants to take the idea one step further: the luxury company has launched a photo project called "Worldsecond" that aims to have all its participants capture photographs across the globe at the same moment in time.

Shoot, Share, and Explore Satellite Photos of Earth with Stratocam

If you've always wanted to be an astronaut photographer shooting images of Earth from a window of the International Space Station, Stratocam is an app for you. Created by Paul Rademacher, it allows you to snap your own photographs inside Google Maps' satellite view of our planet. You can also view and rate other people's photos, and browse the highest rated images from around the world.

Stereogranimator: Create Your Own 3D Photos Using Vintage Stereographs

The New York Public Library has a massive collection of over 40,000 vintage stereographs (two photos taken from slightly different points of view). To properly share them with the world in 3D, the library has launched a new tool called the Stereogranimator. It lets you convert an old stereograph into either an animated 3D GIF (which uses "wiggle stereoscopy") or an anaglyph (the kind that requires special glasses).

Photos from Disposable Cameras Left with Notes in Various NYC Locations

A few weeks ago, Brooklyn resident Katie O'Beirne did a weekend project in which she left a disposable camera on a Prospect Park bench with a note asking passer-bys to snap a photograph. After getting the film developed and finding some cool photos, O'Beirne decided to continue with the project, leaving disposable cameras in a number of other spots around NYC. The resulting photographs can be seen on a Tumblr page she set up called "new york shots".

Magnum Turns to Crowdsourcing to Tag Their Massive Photo Collection

Want to play role in the legendary agency Magnum Photos? Well, now you can as a "Magnum Tagger". The cooperative is having a tough time keeping their large archive of historical photographs organized and easily searchable. Of the 500,000 images they've uploaded to the web, about 200,000 have little or no associated metadata.

Thousands of People in 21 Countries Walking in Stop-Motion

life.turns. is a creative crowd-sourced stop-motion project by photo sharing service Blipfoto. By dividing the motion of a human walking into eight simple frames, they invited contributors to submit photos of people in one of the eight poses. 1025 photos were submitted in 40 days. After putting the submissions in sequence and aligning them, what resulted was a stop-motion video of thousands of people in 21 different countries walking.