Photos from sakura love, sibemolle, Eddie . ., and Life in AsiaNZ.

The Washington DC metro area had record amounts of snowfall the last couple of days and people are digging out from a lot of the white stuff, but it looks like it didn’t keep photographers inside or people from getting out and having fun!

Photos and video from Mr. T in DC, Juliet M, valkyrieh116, lifeinthedistrict, Dave Stroup and Rukasu1. Check out more by tag or in the Snowpocalypse – DC/MD/VA and DCSnowpocalypse2 pools.

Photos from buckaroo kid, p0cket-paul., Herschell Hershey, flavita.valsani, lomokev, revlimit, and jenaardell.

Up Helly Aa refers to any of a variety of fire festivals held in Shetland, in Scotland, annually in the middle of winter to mark the end of the yule season. The festival involves a procession of up to a thousand guizers in Lerwick and considerably lower numbers in the more rural festivals, formed into squads who march through the town or village in a variety of themed costumes. ~ Wikipedia

It looks like the Vikings weren’t the only invaders.

Photos and video from Stealth Robin, BURLINGTONBREW, CaptainOates, ionayarrow, Richard Parker, acidust, and Helen F H.

Enjoy a rare view of the American West as photographed by Timothy O’Sullivan in the late 1800s. O’Sullivan began his photography career as an apprentice to Mathew Brady, the famed U.S. Civil War photographer. The joint exhibition and publication “Framing the West: The Survey Photographs of Timothy H. O’Sullivan,” put together by The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, contains incredible images from two government expeditions into the Western U.S.: the King survey of the 40th parallel and the Wheeler survey west of the 100th meridian.

Happily, Smithsonian Institution and the Library of Congress have just uploaded highlights of this collection to The Commons for you to annotate, tag, share and enjoy.

See and learn more more about this important colloborative effort in the Timothy H. O’Sullivan group on Flickr. If you have contemporary images of the locations in these O’Sullivan photographs, you’re welcome to add them to the group!

Photos from the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution.

Are you into nature and wildlife photography? Then hop over to the App Garden for two applications that will help you locate wildlife near you and share your photos of the wild kingdom with others. Both applications power websites that include Flickr photos, trips of animal sightings, and communities of nature enthusiasts.

Simon Willison and the team at Wildlife Near You built an app that allows you to share trip reports and wildlife sightings as well as search for wildlife near you. Import your Flickr photos of wildlife so that the community can help you identify the species in your photos.

Adam Jack’s WildObs also allows you to import your photos for identification and discovery. They make great use of geolocation data, too, placing a map right on the photo page. Both applications link your photos back to Flickr, too, so that visitors can comment, fave, or check out the rest of your photostream.

Enjoy your wildlife encounters!

Applications by Simon Willison and Adam Jack.

Photos from no.33, Brandon Christopher Warren, Greenpin Chang, poveralice, and ali khurshid.

Hello all! There is an issue causing video uploads to Flickr to fail right now. The Flickr Team is aware of the problems and are working on it right now! We do not have an estimate on when this will be resolved, but will let you know as soon as we have that. Meanwhile, you can keep en eye on this Help Forum topic in the meantime. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Update 11:20AM PST: This issue has been resolved, so feel free to upload your video!

Photos from DanieleP◄ http://www.danielep.it ►, csicsagatya, leontjew, [closed account] Iany T, and sea legs snapshots.

Please welcome the U.S. National Archives to The Commons, the world’s public photography archives on Flickr to which you can contribute information and knowledge.

With over 3,000 images in 49 sets uploaded already, perusing these important archival images should keep you entertained for a long time. Their four collections encompass important Americana, ranging from the famous Mathew Brady Civil War images to historical and iconic images of American history.

Step back to the 1860s to see Civil War battle scenes in the Mathew Brady Civil War Photography collection. Visit the DOCUMERICA Project by the Environmental Protection Agency collection, which documents everyday life in the 1970s. The Development and Public Works collection contains images of the Flatriver irrigation project in Montana. Their Historical Photographs and Documents collection contains milestones in U.S. history, including the Declaration of Independence, the Earth as seen from space, and just a series of favorites, including Ansel Adams.

“The Tetons – Snake River,” Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, by Ansel Adams

Photos from the U.S. National Archives.