We’ve been working with the cool kids at Picnik to make it easier to edit your pictures and we’re excited to announce the new Picnik Photo Basket! Starting today, you can send a batch of freshly uploaded pictures to Picnik for editing all at once!

Try out the new Photo Basket when you upload your next batch of pictures, either using the web upload form or the desktop Uploadr. Once you’ve added titles and descriptions, you’ll see a new “Save & Edit” button down the bottom. Clickety-click and we’ll send those photos into Picnik as a batch for you. Then you can crop and sharpen to your heart’s content, save everything and come back to your photostream.

To learn more about Picnik and how to edit your photos on Flickr check out the Picnik FAQ.

George Eastman House is the oldest photography museum in the world, housed in the former home of Mr. George Eastman, the so-called father of modern photography and founder of Eastman Kodak company. The Museum is also one of the premiere centres of photographic conservation in the world. You can imagine our delight when they decided to join The Commons on Flickr!

Their initial foray includes 3 sets:

The Chusseau-Flaviens collection depicts “social and political figures and events throughout Europe and the colonial empires in the Near East and the Far East” from the 1890s to just before World War I…

…Messrs. Southworth & Hawes were partners in commercial studio in Boston, primarily shooting daguerreotype portraits. The studio opened in 1843, and closed twenty years later…

…and a small selection of exquisite Autochromes, the first colour photographic process, invented by Auguste and Louis Lumière in 1904.

In other news, Brooklyn Museum has just uploaded their next installment of their glorious Egyptian lantern slides, this time with a focus on people and life of the time. We’re also excited to be launching the ability to search across all the photos in The Commons! Fuelled by your tagging and other descriptive commentary, we can now all bear witness to brand new emergent collections found only on Flickr, created by you. Some favourites so far include blue and yellow, moustachioed men wearing ties and crowded streets.

Photos from Rastaschas, J@m, and Rémi avec un i.

“Usually when you think of city surfing it would have to be Cape Town, Miami, Santa Monica, etc., not Munich, 250 miles from the coast. A quick search for Munich surfer turns up loads of images. In case you were wondering how this works, I found some video.” Lomokev

Photos from alina.rudya, hyperbuoy, and Franky Bono.
As shared in FlickrCentral — if you’ve an idea for FlickrBlog, please share!

The One Hundred Strangers project is a learning group for people who want to improve the social and technical skills needed for taking portraits of strangers and telling their stories. The method is learning by doing.

Photos by slithy-toves, Teppo (the group’s founder) & Kerrreee.

Photos from sculptress studio.

SLOWLORIS was hanging out a window when she was struck by lightning. You may find the video disturbing, but please rest assured that she’s ok:

Because you insisted, here’s the unedited screaming version. I also added video from a minute before the lightning struck so you can get an idea of how hard it was raining. From what i understand, it went through my left hand holding the camera, crossed my back and exited out of my right hand holding onto the metal railing. No entry or exit wounds, just a really good zap!

You all take remarkable photographs. From documenting momentous change to capturing the small precious moments around you, the Flickr community has been sharing some remarkable photographs for over four years.

Team Flickr has long wanted to create a way to make it easier for those who use photos as a part of their daily business to do so in a way that respects the talent and rights of our members.

The great folks at Getty Images and Flickr are joining forces to create a collection of royalty free, rights ready and rights managed photographs. This announcement is just the first step and there’s a lot to do before we launch. We’ve created a FAQ to address what we think will be the initial questions.

With the number of wildfires currently burning out of control in California, it was “ixnay on the ireworksfay” in many local counties this weekend. We here at Team Flickr have been living vicariously through your 4th of July sparkler photos.

Photos from john.reilly, ControlSix, and Kimmiero.

Team Flickr wishes all of our Canadian members a Happy Canada Day!

Photos from Lao Er, Amadika, About News46, marty_pinker, aiaichristmas, and poppymaher.