Now that we’re two days away from the official beginning of the spring season, expect to see plenty of floral landscapes in Explore.

Seen here: Early blooms of rapeseed, daffodils, tulips, poppies dominate meadows and fields, creating delightful nature scenery from China to Israel.

See, and share, more dazzling photos in the Full Blooms gallery.

Photos from Melinda ^..^, Graham Dash, Kirsten Storm, puppet.show, openspacer, Bill Shupp, and noam_adir.

Our latest member of The Commons is the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office (TAHO). The TAHO brings together the collections and resources of the Archives Office of Tasmania, the State Library’s Heritage Collections and the Launceston Local Studies Collection to provide the Tasmanian community with unprecedented access to information about their cultural and documentary heritage to create more awareness, better understanding and easier access to the community’s documentary heritage.

The TAHO collections constitute a large and significant portion of the “memory” of Tasmania’s community. Additionally TAHO regulates the preservation and eventual destruction or retention of State and local government records in Tasmania and seeks to acquire private records which have long-term value to the community and best document the political, social, cultural, economic and natural history of Tasmania.

The TAHO joins with nearly 800 photos. The 25 initial sets include topics like The Tasmanian Wilderness, Tasmanian Lighthouses, Sports in Tasmania, and the visit of Queen Elisabeth II in Tasmania. We hope you enjoy the collection, and invite you to contribute your knowledge through meaningful comments and tags to the photos.

Photos from the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office.

To celebrate our 10^th anniversary, we asked you to share up to 10 of your favorite photos from the past 10 years in the #Flickr10 group. Yesterday, we started with people shots. We continue our showcase with some of our favorite skyward shots, and will be posting more of your faves until Wednesday next week when our “Flickr 10″ 10 day Samplr series concludes. We hope you enjoy the selection!

Photos from Tim Drivas, Hello i’m Wild, philippe julien, Tore Thiis Fjeld, SilverStack, Matt Lief Anderson, Håkan Dahlström, lorenzoviolone, matoses, and JamesMFrith.

Many parts of the world honor this year’s St. Patrick’s Day with ample applications of green colors, including Chicago’s dyed river, festive wigs worn in London’s parade, and Ireland’s illuminated Trim Castle.

See, and share, more photos in the St. Patrick’s Day Festivities gallery.

Photos from ChicagoPhotoShop, PeteTsai, WildebeestEyes, Mista Sparkle, tj.blackwell, ElenaK@Chicago, Vemsteroo, dexout, Chencho Mendoza, D464-Darren Hall, christennyson2008, irishman6351, and bigjoephotos LIPF.

To celebrate our 10^th anniversary, we asked you to share up to 10 of your favorite photos from the past 10 years in the #Flickr10 group. Today we’re starting our Samplr series featuring some of our favorites, and we’ll continue posting more of your faves throughout the next 10 days. We hope you enjoy the selection!

Photos from Lou Bert, sandeepachetan.com, dacbild, dinesh.I, Karthi KN Raveendiran, Studio d’Xavier, Maveeran Somasundaram, ginaballerina., Stéphane Dégremont, and Austin Tott.

Today, we’re happy to announce that The Library Company of Philadelphia has just joined The Commons. The Library Company is an independent research library specializing in American history and culture from the 17^th through the 19^th centuries. Open to the public free of charge, the Library Company houses an extensive non-circulating collection of rare books, manuscripts, broadsides, ephemera, prints, photographs, and works of art.

The mission of the Library Company is to preserve, interpret, make available, and augment the valuable materials within its care. The Library Company serves a diverse constituency throughout Philadelphia and nationally and internationally, offering comprehensive reader services, an internationally renowned fellowship program, online catalogs, and regular exhibitions and public programs.

The Library Company of Philadelphia joined with more than 880 images initially, and we invite you to explore the initial sets, including Centennial Advertisements, Philadelphia on Stone Lithographs – Philadelphia Businesses, and the John Frank Keith Collection. Make sure to come back regularly as new content is uploaded.

Photos from the The Library Company of Philadelphia.

Millions of people follow bestselling author Brandon Stanton’s Humans of New York (HONY), a blog featuring his portraits and stories of people he’s encountered on the streets of New York. As part of a special “on the road” edition of HONY, Stanton (aka humansofny on Flickr) gathered these stories in Austin while attending SXSW. From career transition to family friction, each person candidly shared their personal tales.

Behold, the “Humans of Austin”:

“I worked in technology for many years, but I got tired of working for The Man. Plus, technology has its ups and downs. Chicken is always steady.”

“My girlfriend’s parents are really religious. The first time I met them, they called her later and asked: ‘Is your new friend struggling with her sexuality?’”

“I won.”

“People have problems at home, and they take it out on other people. That’s why things are bad, and it just goes on and on.”

“When I turned myself into the FBI at the age of 21. I’d committed a stupid crime, and I’d never been arrested before, so I was hiding from the cops. But then they started calling my mom. And she called and asked me to turn myself in. And I had to, cause it was my mom.”

“I want to be a singer, a president, and a tennis player.” “I want to be a president, a teacher, a doctor, and a police.”

Enjoy more from the Humans of Austin set.

No one can deny the popularity of a selfie. We’ve seen it trending everywhere: at the Oscars, between world leaders, among celebrities — you name it! But long before it became a phenomenon, Elaine Adolfo was taking them for nearly a decade, showcasing her photos in a Flickr series called The 10 Year Project.

“Most people take photos of themselves on trips or some place special,” Elaine tells The Weekly Flickr in the accompanying video. “But I felt that it was important to photograph myself in front of things that I’m doing every day. I wanted to document those simple moments because that’s what makes up your life.”

Elaine joined Flickr when it first launched in 2004. At the time, she was drawn to the site because she says there’s was nothing quite like it.

“Back in 2004, sharing your photos was not an easy process,” Elaine remembers. “You would email huge files to people, and there was no organization about it. There were sites that you could upload your photos, buy mugs with your photos on them… but it was not focused on sharing with your friends and Flickr offered that.”

Elaine’s selfie project came about in 2006 after a trip to the eyeglass store. She was trying on new glasses and took a picture of herself with a new pair. The next day she took a picture in her regular glasses to compare looks. Over the next few days Elaine took several pictures of herself and unconsciously began taking more.

“Finally, the 30th day comes, I’m taking more pictures of myself and said, ‘Oh, this is interesting! I’ve pretty much documented my life for a month. Let me just put them all in a folder and see what happens.’ I was thinking maybe I’d call it a 30-day project but then I thought, no let’s do a 10-year project. And that’s how my personal selfie project started. I just picked a random number and said, ‘Let’s see how far this goes.’”

In the beginning, it was a bit uncomfortable for Elaine as the concept of a selfie was unheard of.

“It wasn’t normal,” Elaine says. “You wouldn’t see people taking photos of themselves.”

Back in 2006, Elaine didn’t have a smartphone with a camera. Instead, she took photos of herself with a regular camera, which resulted in a lot of strange looks from people passing by.

“I’d be in front of a frozen yogurt place, and people behind the counter would say, ‘Seriously? You find this fascinating?’ and I would say, ‘Yeah, thank you!’” Elaine says laughing.

“When I started the project there wasn’t really a grand plan,” Elaine explains. “It was just to see what I looked like every day. But as it progressed, I started noticing different changes going on in my face. You know, you’d get a little fat here, get a little sad here, some days you’re really happy… but I realized I’m actually documenting my aging. It’s subtle but really powerful because all those changes — the lines on your face, etc. It speaks to a story of what happened to your life at that moment… and that’s something I find really precious.”

As the years went by, Flickr evolved into a community of photographers, and Elaine began to receive many positive comments about her project. Most people found her work to be fascinating and very introspective. Every once in awhile, however, Elaine would receive negative feedback; accusations that the series made her seem “too vain.”

“I’ll admit, it hurt,” Elaine says. “At the same time I was like, ‘I can show you 300 photos where I’m not looking beautiful at all!’ But I think it’s important that you love the days when you’re not looking so great, because those are the moments something amazing is happening.”

“On those ugly, dark days, that’s when you’re the strongest and you need to cherish those moments,” Elaine says. “So when I take a picture of myself and it’s not looking particularly great… that’s a wonderful experience to go through and I’m glad that I have a photo to remember that really challenging day.”

To date, Elaine is 8 years into her project with nearly 3,000 selfies. She describes her series as a “weird journal” of her life — documenting the highs and lows throughout the years.

“I think when I’m 75 [years old] looking back on these photos, I think I’m going to be really, really joyful,” Elaine says. “It’s just going to make me so happy to look through all the images and remember that time I had that great meal with my friends, [or] that time I was exhausted after 10 hours of dance. I’m just going to have a rush of memories that’s going to give me so much happiness, and I look forward to that day.”

Visit Elaine’s photostream to see more of her photography.

Previous episode: ‘Big Me, Little Me’: Hilarious Self-Portraits

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.

Our last Flickr Friday theme was #DorothysRedShoes. This is a selection of our favorites from your submissions.

It was a lot of fun going through your submissions. Many of you literally took Dorothy and placed her in unconventional places. Even the Wicked Witch of the East had an appearance in the challenge. You made us laugh and took us to the land of magic. You can have a look at all your great submissions in the Flickr Friday group pool.

Start creating your galleries of favorites. We are very thankful to all those who have already shared them with us. And for those who haven’t, don’t wait any more and send us yours too!

The theme for next week will be #ImOnlyHuman which is a recall to our nature as human beings. Remember all the things that make you feel alive and print them into your shots. Tell us a unique story and start sharing it in the Flickr Friday group. The selection of the week, will be showcased right here in FlickrBlog. You can make the challenge more fun and invite your friends to take part in it by reteweeting us, or sharing our status.

Photos from Jasna Buzimkic, Lost Star, João Pedro & Mariângela, Tom Landretti, Valet Emilie, Richard Le Sauvage, C. Torres Ch., Philippe, Johanneke Kroesbergen-Kamps, CoolMcFlash, Hester, Noah Williams, and Janice.

#FlickrFriday is a weekly photography project that challenges your creativity. For a chance to be featured on FlickrBlog, follow @flickr on Twitter & like us on Facebook and look for the weekly theme announcement every Friday. Browse the Flickr Friday category for more.

For photographer and Flickr member Steve Clasper, the sea is a canvas for sublime long exposure photos, where the surface of the ocean is smoothed to pink and orange pastels and waves turn to mist around the glistening rocks on the shore.

Steve began taking photos in 2007 after getting inspiration from seascapes and landscapes that he saw online. His first DSLR was a Canon 400D, and he currently shoots on a Canon 5D Mark III, using an array of filters, including a Lee 0.9HE Grad, two Kood ND4 filters, and a B&W ND110 10-stop for exposures lasting many minutes. He often shoots his seascapes near his home in Northumberland, England.

We’re happy Steve agreed to share tips and tricks for how he shoots such lovely images with the wider Flickr community. We hope you enjoy.

Flickr: Can you tell us more about this photo? What were the circumstances of the shoot?

Steve Clasper: This was a planned shoot as it’s close to where I live in the northeast of England. I’ve know about this location for a while and all the local photographers have more or less got this one in their portfolios too. The pipe has recently been replaced with a newer red one, and it looks rather nice against the sea and sky when the conditions are right, so I got a nice and early start to capture the sunrise and make that red pipe stand out.

Flickr: What are the challenges with getting long-exposure shots like this?

SC: I think the most difficult challenge is keeping sea spray off the filter when the conditions are a bit feisty. Doing long exposure work, it could be going OK until the final second. And then, a whole load of spray could get on your filter.

Flickr: Was it hard to balance the tripod in this shot?

SC: The tripod here has two legs balanced on each wood post, and the 3rd leg is balanced on the pipe itself. So, I was balancing on the pipe to get this shot — obviously the sea wasn’t too far in as I’d not have risked doing this, otherwise.

Flickr: Is there anything in particular in post-processing that made the image pop further?

SC: I lifted the levels in CS6 a bit to brighten it up and then used a slight red color balance lift in the highlights for the sky and also a slight yellow lift — then contrast to about 9/10 and a very slight S-curve.

Flickr: With long exposure and water, what advice would you give other photographers to take images like this?

SC: Cover the eye piece on your camera with the rubber cover on your camera strap or use a cloth. This will stop light from leaking into your camera and spoiling your image. Also if you’re on the sand, then push your tripod legs deep into the sand. You’ll get less movement and shake, and you’ll get one or two more keepers.

Flickr: What is your favorite part of Flickr?

SC: The groups and the variety of images in them, you get really inspired to try different techniques. And if you’re after a specific style, then a quick search on Flickr is the way to go.

Flickr: What have you learned from other Flickr members?

SC: I’ve gained a lot of knowledge and helpful tips on my photographic journey through them, and the inspiration is never ending. Flickr has made me go out every time to try and better my previous shot. It’s a source of information for locations and how to better your image.

Flickr: Was the degree of difficulty a lot higher for this image, given that you’re in your own shot?

SC: The Aurora is very rare to capture in Northumberland. So when it was known that it had made an appearance, I rushed and grabbed my camera and headed off to a place I visit often in Low Hauxley on the Northumberland coast. After a few shots, I decided to take a “selfie.” So I found this nicely placed rock, which gave a nice composition with Coquet Island on the horizon and the Aurora lighting up the night sky. I set my timer for 10 seconds on the camera and stood on the rock with my torch pointing ahead. I had to stand still for 8 seconds as the settings were 8 seconds at ƒ/4.5, ISO1600 and 23mm.

Special thanks to Stuart Patterson for sharing the photo above of Steve balancing on top of the red pipe.