Last Flickr Friday was a theme of patience. Long Exposures, usually require a lot of it, while you set up your camera, compose the scene in the viewfinder and take your shot with very long shutter speeds.
Many of you made sure to take advantage of the hours between dusk and dawn to paint with light or freeze the landscapes, others created ghostly scenes with blurred silhouettes and movements. And then there were those who took a more humorous approach to the theme. Enjoy all the contributions in the Flickr Friday group pool, and start shooting for our current theme #YouAndMe.
On Memorial Day, we honor the brave men and women in our nation’s military for their dedication, courage and sacrifice. We also acknowledge the fortitude of their families as they wait for the safe return of their loved ones.
Lance Cpl. Stephen Stewart, known on Flickr as STStewart1, is a combat correspondent for the U.S. Marine Corps and recognizes their commitment often. One of the most powerful moments he captures are military homecomings.
“Words can’t even describe the emotion that’s in the air,” Stephen says in the accompanying video. “People are crying; they’re hugging; they’re laughing because you’re seeing someone for the first time in however long. It’s incredible.”
Deployments generally last between four months and a year.
“The Marines that I talk to like going on deployment,” Stephen says. “They do it first and foremost to protect and defend their country. But part of the reason they join is the amount of knowledge and experience they gain while deployed. It just makes them a better Marine.”
Naturally while they’re away, many Marines are acutely aware they’re missing important events back at home making the separation even more difficult.
“I know a lance corporal that deployed with the first Marine division out of Camp Pendleton to Afghanistan,” Stephen says. “He had just been married and during the deployment he got the phone call saying he was going to be a dad. Luckily he was back by the time his daughter was born, but getting that phone call must have been hard. It just makes getting back home even more important.”
The homecoming ceremony itself is brief, but the wait for families can be very long. Families are given an approximate time for when their loved ones will return, but Stephen says that time will jump about four hours in either direction.
“It can be very frustrating for those waiting,” says Stephen. “I’ve been to returns at four o’clock in the morning that were supposed to happen a ten o’clock the night before. But the families are up all night, you can see it in their eyes that they’re not going to sleep until they see their loved ones.”
The excitement begins when the Marines arrive on site and line up into formation. This can be the most excruciating part for families as the Marines are lined up fairly close to them – nearly 50 yards away – but can’t run to them. The Marines cannot break formation until they’re officially dismissed, leaving their loved ones to point and wave, take pictures and wait. When the final sign to break formation is given, Stephen says the air is explosive.
“Once the commanding officer says, ‘Marines, fall out’,” Stephen says. “Sweet, emotional chaos breaks loose. The two groups collide and embrace each other for the first time. It’s huge and exciting. Everything from crying to screaming to laughing, hugging and kissing happens all at once.”
The moment that resonates with Stephen the most is the emotional homecoming of Staff Sergeant Folk, a crewmaster with Marine Aerial Refueler Transport Squadron 252, who spent nine months in Afghanistan.
“Sgt. Folk saw his two kids and just dropped to his knees immediately, right when they reached him,” Stephen recalls. “He grabbed them and embraced them… you could just tell it was very emotional, especially for those kids.”
Stephen says in every single picture, it’s very easy to understand the sacrifice military families make everyday. While the separation is hard on those serving abroad, the fear of the unknown is just as difficult for loved ones back home.
“The sacrifice we make as military members is huge, but the sacrifice our families make to support our decision to join the military is much greater,” Stephen says. “We are the ones to choose to volunteer and go overseas, they did not. Our families are forced to live with our decision and in the process give us unconditional love and support — it’s huge.”
Stephen loves his job because he takes photos and writes stories so families know what their loved ones are doing. But with homecomings, specifically, he feels it reminds us all why military members do what they do.
“We serve for our country but at the very core we do it for our families too,” Stephen says, “After a long deployment and seeing the joy on their faces… it’s a beautiful moment that means so much.”
Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr Group or tweet us at @theweeklyflickr.
A massive tornado ripped through the Oklahoma City area on Monday, leaving behind a 20-mile path of death and destruction. Volunteers and aid organizations have come together to help victims of this harrowing disaster, but the effort in providing relief and support for affected communities has only taken the first step in recovering.
In the beginning, Flickr innovated the way people share and discover photos. Today, we are shifting the photo-sharing landscape again. We’re releasing a Flickr that’s more spectacular, much bigger, and one you can take anywhere.
Biggr. A free terabyte of space
At Flickr, we believe you should share all your images in full resolution, so life’s moments can be relived in their original quality. No limited pixels, no cramped formats, no memories that fall flat. We’re giving your photos room to breathe, and you the space to upload a dizzying number of photos and videos, for free. Just how big is a terabyte? Well, you could take a photo every hour for forty years without filling one.
And yep, you heard us. It’s free.
Spectaculr. A new, beautiful experience for your photos
We want Flickr to be the most amazing community and place for you to share your photos. So, we’re also revealing a beautiful new design that puts photos at the heart of your Flickr experience, where they should always be. Whether it’s a sweeping landscape or a family portrait, we want every photo to be at its most spectacular.
Your homepage is now a gateway to everything you care about, and all the photos Flickr has to offer. Our new Activity Feed combines your friends’ recent uploads with activity on your own photos, and all in a beautiful design that lets you share and interact right on the page.
We completely rebuilt the photostream to show off your photos in a seamless layout, and gave you room to express yourself with a customizable cover photo and high-res profile picture.
On Flickr, you’ve always had powerful tools to organize your precious photos. Now your sets tell an even more beautiful story around your photos for you and anyone who’s reading along.
Our new photo experience displays images in as many pixels as possible, with all the context you need to easily chime in on the conversation around every image.
There’s also a new slideshow mode that beautifully showcases photos so you can simply lean back and enjoy them without lifting a finger. We combined elegant transitions and facial detection technology to make sure the key elements in every photo are highlighted.
Now that everyone has one terabyte, we also wanted to give your longer videos a home on Flickr, whether you’ve shot a timelapse or caught a friend’s reaction to their surprise party. We are now supporting up to a full 3 minutes per video of 1080p HD quality. (And yes, you can upload as many as you have space for.)
Wherevr. A Flickr you can take anywhere.
The world is going mobile, and in December we took the first big step to send Flickr wherever you go with a new and beloved iPhone app. Our brand new Android app pushes the boundaries on beauty even further. We designed it with your needs in mind: how you interact, how you share, and how you view photos when you’re on the go.
So Android users, head over to the Google Play store where the new Flickr app is waiting for you.
Thank you.
None of this would have been possible without you, the Flickr community. Much of what you see here started as ideas we’ve heard from you over the years. We are all truly excited to deliver the home your photos deserve, whether you’re sharing them with your friends, your family, or the world.
A better Flickr is here.
And not a moment too soon. With all of the power that you love, Flickr is now in its most beautiful form, and available to everyone.
Let us know what you think, and come to the forum to give us your ideas and feedback.
The diversity of fleshy plants that we call succulents is immensely vast. From your nearest nursery to the Cholla Cactus Garden in Joshua Tree National Park, the world’s collection of these plants provides us plenty of locations to shoot them.
Most of us have a bucket list of things we want (or would like) to do in our lifetime. Whether it’s traveling to exotic locations, learning to cook delicious meals or taking on a dream job — we’ve all got something.
Nicolas Vallejos, known on Flickr as ANVRecife, had the same desire, which is in part why he started taking pictures of a character he calls Woody.
“Woody is a catalyst for fun,” he says in the accompanying video. “He can be anything, go anywhere. There’s no limit to what he can do!”
Nicolas’ favorite photos are those shots where Woody represents his alter-ego.
“I always wanted a tattoo and design it myself, but never had the courage to do it!” Nicolas says. “But Woody can. He basically can be anything that I wanted to be and didn’t have either the time, patience or skills. And taking those pictures are the most fun.”
Photography has always a big part of Nicolas’ life. As a design manager in Minneapolis, he was used to directing photo shoots but wanted a more fun and hands on approach.
Nicolas discovered Woody in 2003 while shopping at IKEA. He noticed a bin full of wooden dolls and without question he realized he found his muse for his macro photography.
“I just looked at him and thought ‘Oh my god, I can actually use him as my model!’” Nicolas says. “The moment I picked him up and instantly knew I had something special.”
What excites Nicolas about Woody is the figure provides many challenges as well as possibilities. In the beginning, one of his biggest hurdles was how to convey emotion from something inanimate that has no facial expressions. Nicolas discovered he could achieve this with different body movements, colors, lighting and backgrounds. One of his favorite examples is Slow, where he created a sense of darkness and emotion with the simplest lighting and use of shadows.
Nicolas also loves to use Woody to represent visual metaphors for those situations humans can’t do.
“I think people would love to have a restart button in their lives,” Nicolas describes. “For example, if they’re going through a rough patch, wouldn’t it be great if they had a CONTROL Z or restart button? Woody can do that!”
At the end of the day, Nicolas wants people to laugh and be wow’d by what they see in Woody. To date, Nicolas has taken over 300 shots in the last six years and knows there’s still more Woody has left to do.
“People always ask me what will Woody do next?” Nicolas says. “And I always say, ‘You tell me!’ Woody represents all of us. And it’s exciting to know that every challenge I get, Woody is going to come to the rescue, bring my ideas to life that people will hopefully connect with. And I love it.”
Do you want to be featured on The Weekly Flickr? We are looking for your photos that amaze, excite, delight and inspire. Share them with us in the The Weekly Flickr group or tweet us at @TheWeeklyFlickr.
Last Flickr Friday we told you to rub the sleep out of your eyes and greet a new day with your favorite camera for our latest theme Glorious Morning.
And you got up with the sun to capture some wonderful shots of flora in the pristine dawn, breakfast table staples, and other moments caught up in that beautifying, early-morning light. Don’t miss all the contributions in the Flickr Friday group pool, and stay tuned for our next challenge that we’ll announce soon!
Witnessing whales as they break water surfaces (aka breaching) is an enthralling experience in the wild. From a chin slap to a full-body aerial, this lunging behavior displays the impressive power and imposing size of these marine behemoths.
Seasickness, extreme patience, luck, timing, balance — all factors in seizing moments to shoot exciting whale shots like the ones featured here.
If you are a parent or a student, you know that the costs of a U.S. college education have skyrocketed in recent years. What you may not know is that the annual cost of a four-year degree has surged three times the pace of inflation since the 1970s.
As college graduation season gets under way, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance and The Daily Ticker are teaming up to produce a special live streaming event on May 23 at 12:30 pm ET around the rising cost of college.
Have you ever wondered if going to college is worth it? Or wondered how you might pay for your four-year education? Are you concerned about how to find a good paying job after school?
Tell your story and get your questions answered by a panel of experts!
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