This paper looks at the history of vernacular photography and the uses and implications of the Flickr photosharing network. Presented at MIT5, April 2007.

1. JEAN BURGESS CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR CREATIVE INDUSTRIES AND INNOVATION QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY QUEENSLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY vernacular photography 2.0 FLICKR, AESTHETICS AND THE RELATIONS OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION

2. a brief history of vernacular photography early photography

3. a brief history of vernacular photography the kodak moment

4. kodak as cultural leader

5. kodak as cultural leader

7. research participants Name Gender Age Education Occupation Cyron M 30 Tertiary (incomplete) Online customer support David de Groot M 32 Tertiary (incomplete) IT network security Louise F 44 Bachelors Degree Nursing/medical research Melanie Cook F 47 Secondary (incomplete) Self-employed (web design/craft products) Mr Magoo ICU M 26 Secondary (incomplete) computer systems engineer shanrosen F 55 Bachelors degree part-time student Yinyang M 39 Tertiary (incomplete) IT contractor

8. cyron “ Photography is probably the first time that I’ve ever felt a bit creative. My school life consisted of things like physics and chemistry and maths, and I couldn’t draw a stick figure to save my life, I can’t paint, I can’t sing, and I don’t feel the urge to do any of those typically creative things. […] It allows me to actually be creative, I can actually produce something” “ It has changed the way I look at the world because I wander around looking at things from different angles, from different perspectives, always bearing in mind what might make a good photo.”

9. david de groot “ I put some photos into the Samford show and got a couple of awards for it, and I thought, ‘That’s really cool!’ And so it sort of buoys you up to go out and show your photos. It’s sort of a snowball effect, once you’ve got people that are regularly looking at your stuff and commenting on it and you’re entering competitions and winning stuff it sort of keeps the whole thing going.”

10. louise “ So Steve [a fellow member of the Brisbane Meetup group] doesn’t do photos of his kids, or crummy boring stuff, he does interesting photos, or he tries to. So I think he does more along the lines of the art theme, and I really like that, and I think that’s something I could see would be fun to do. […] from an art point of view I see that it will very quickly develop into that, more than taking happy snaps of my kids and what have you.”

11. melanie cook “ Technically, I couldn’t tell you anything about it, I just know what to do. Just through, if I do this I know that’s what I’ll get.” “ But it is very odd at first, that people keep saying ‘Oh but you are an artist!’ Like I say, I want to be an artist when I grow up, and [they say] ‘you already are.’”

12. mr magoo ICU “ A photo of a bee on a flower doesn’t really inspire much, you know, anyone can take that in their garden. I try to be a bit more creative in a way because you put a lot of thought into the shot, the lighting. There’s certainly no light down in the tunnel so you’ve got to use torches and flashes and whatever else, in some cases fireworks and that sort of thing to light it up - LED lights for cool effects, torches for warm effects. I guess that’s the bit that interests me the most - working out different ways that I can use light to create a different scene.”

13. shanrosen “ I started going there just because it used to make me so happy to see all these photos people were doing. I mean some of them are just really beautiful, some of them are really funny, and I just used to like seeing the whole world.” “ I was seeing these different people with absolute garbage cameras way worse than mine, doing beautiful photography. And I thought, well, what am I on about, if they’re doing that, there’s all kinds of people with all kinds of garbage cameras and they’re not worried about it.”

14. yinyang “ I suppose that’s the other thing, with any kind of hobby, once you start getting into it you start reading more and more stuff about it - like the history, and finding out about some of the legends of photography.” “ One of the [groups] that I happened upon by chance was the Bokeh one. Bokeh is when you take a photo where you focus quite close and blur the background so you’ve got a very small depth of field. You don’t do it in Photoshop. Depending on the shape of the lens…you get the points of light in the background, if it’s really good Bokeh it highlights the shape of your lens a bit, whether it’s round or hexagonal, you get these nice little shapes, and it’s more noticeable when you’ve got light in the background. There’s supposed to be this whole aesthetic about it.”

15. the democratisation of cultural value?

16. credits a flower grows in her head JoanLovesPaper A street show....... From jungleorkid Feet up Saturday? JodyMcG A street show....... jungleorkid