Wishing all a joyful Festival of Lights!

See more images of this year’s Diwali.

Photos from Animation Maniac, Catch the dream, Meredith Jones, phalgunp, Shah’91, and rosa_pedra.

The Jewish Women’s Archive joins The Commons on Flickr as our 29th partner!

Based in Brookline, Massachusetts, the Archive is a virtual, not a physical, repository. We’re excited to help them extend their mission of “uncovering, chronicling, and transmitting to a broad public the rich history of American Jewish women.”

They enter The Commons with photographs chronicling the lives of American Jewish women during World War II. Many of the images come from the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford, which has recently published Remembering the Old Neighborhood: Stories from Hartford’s North End, a compilation of essays and oral histories. The Jewish Women’s Archive has a number of online exhibits and collections, including one on the Jewish community during Hurricane Katrina.

Not what has happened, but what is recorded makes history. – Rosa Sonneschein, first issue of The American Jewess, online at the Jewish Women’s Archive website

Photos from shotam and naoK, as suggested by Yamaneko_ from Yahoo! in Flickr Central.

Expedition 20, the long duration flight to the International Space Station recently concluded, and the NASA photostream has posted some great photos of the capsule landing in Kazakhstan. Capsule passengers were cosmonaut and mission commander Gennady Padalka, NASA astronaut and flight engineer Michael Barratt, and Canadian businessman and space flight participant Guy Laliberté. View more in the Expedition 20 set

Not that we’re keeping score, but punimoe had the honour of uploading our 4 billionth photo on Saturday.

Sadly, while 1,000,000,000 is no more, you can still see what 2,000,000,000 and 3,000,000,000 looked like.

For what it’s worth, it’s really difficult writing about all these billions without having a small Dr. Evil moment. That is all.

Photo from punimoe.

Long time friend of Flickr, lomokev (aka Kevin Meredith) will be in town next week. Please join us at The Booksmith on Monday night as we celebrate the publication of his book Hot Shots here in the US. For more information on his visit, please check out Kev’s site and feel free to RSVP on Upcoming. Note to self: buy wine.

Photo from lomokev.

Photos from quinnloganmckee, carl kalabaw, photo61guy, teo de pap, TroyMason, c.zwerg, slopjop, and NgirNgir.

Members of the Oxford Flickr group got together to create an exhibition of their photographs showing what they see in their city. The event was arranged through their Flickr group. Garrett Coakley, one of the organizers, said,

“It’s been an exciting challenge setting up an exhibition when most of the exhibitors have only ever communicated online – it just goes to show that when you have a internet-based community of like-minded individuals you can translate that into a real-world event.

If you’re going to be in Oxford in October, or if you’d just like to find out more about it, check out the the Upcoming event page.

Above photos in the Oxford group pool from aphudsonuk, kT LindSAy, pollyblue, Telenous, lyon photography, and jazza2.

It’s been an awful several days of natural tragedies in Asia-Pacific regions, coming on the heels of the recent storms and floods in Manila. Earthquakes sparked tsunamis which struck Tonga and Samoa, and another has followed in Indonesia, prompting landslides in it’s wake. On top of that, another typhoon- Parma (known as Pepeng locally)- is racing through the Philippines. Hundreds of lives have been lost and thousands displaced. Relief efforts for recent and ongoing disasters are underway.

Photos from suhai19, mohamadfazli, James Kneubuhl, MJField, dan_07, L.A Lomarda, and Storm Crypt.

The Galt Museum and Archives in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada joins The Commons on Flickr as our 28th partner; please welcome them into the fold!

What’s incredible about the museum is that such an enormous collection is housed in a small city museum. Boasting over 20,000 artifacts and 300,000 archival documents and photographs, they are sure to keep us busy crowdsourcing their material with tags, comments, and research. They play “a vital role in preserving and interpreting the material culture of Lethbridge and Southwestern Alberta.”

They begin their Commons journey with 23 sets, including World War II images, sports and leisure, portraiture, agriculture, mining, transportation, and even some of their curators’ favorites. Here are some highlights to get you going.
 

First People
Iconic photographs of Alberta’s first people

Postcards
Highlights of what Alberta found postcard worthy back in the day

Unidentified
Up for a challenge? Can you help identify these people and events?

With 126 photos to explore, we hope you’ll find some favorites in this archival collection.