Click what a picture
By Martin Dawes
THEY call themselves the Flickrites - around 200 snap happy photographers on the prowl around Sheffield looking for decent shots.
And my, how they have succeeded. They've recorded the city in all its glory for an online photography archive.
"We want people around the world to see what Sheffield life is like and how beautiful it is," says John Wardell, Flickrite and amateur photographer who joined the local group on Flickr.com a year ago.
He specialises in abstract and macro (close-up) photography, such as this one of a paddle taken in the Rother Valley Country Park.
Others may be into landscapes, sport, black and white photography , using a particular camera, or just like to wander the city making a journalistic record.
The Sheffield group is part of a worldwide online site - one of the biggest is in San Francisco - but John reckons that while they might not be able to compete in quantity they do on quality.
"The quality of some of the photos in the Sheffield group is fantastic," he says.
With the advent of digital photography, taking and sending a photo is as easy as pushing a button and clicking a mouse.
With over 3,300 photos in the archive it's already proving an invaluable resource and no doubt one day it will be of historical importance.
Gareth Davies, one of the administrators who set up the group in March last year, says: "We think it is a unique record as it is now and how it has changed and is changing.
"Different members of the group have different interests and so bring massive variety."
Photographers can join up as themselves or adopt 'handles' or web personas. Harry Halibut, for example, has a penchant for pictures of city doorways while Drunken Monkey seems to shoot everything from pop concerts to his own birthday party.
Gareth (Trois Ttes) adds that meetings are held every two months and competitions set on different subjects. There is also a Pick of the Week every Friday.
It has not taken long for academia to get involved. Dr Julia Davies, who is also a Sheffield Flicker (DrJoolz), has written a paper saying digital photography and sites like Flickr have "changed the way people look at the world
"They now carry cameras everywhere they go . . . and even attend international meetings just to see their Flickr friends face to face.
"With basic membership free of charge, Flickr is easy to join yet seems difficult to leave."
http://www.flickr.com/groups/sheffieldTHIS must be a first. Justin Scott's written a play without any swearing or nudity.
"It is. It's my most human play," says the 35-year-old playwright who wants to be the most famous person to come out of Conisbrough. He's up against Tony Christie.
Justin has trousered 10,000 from the Arts Council to write his new play Radio Silence about women who consult a medium.
"I went to see a few mediums and research those events when they pick someone out of the audience. They didn't pick me but Sue Cunningham, whom I interviewed, said she felt it was going to be a great success. I don't know whether that was her or her spirit talking."
While Justin, who has based Malcolm the medium in the play loosely on Sue, waits for Radio Silence to be performed at the Little Theatre next year he's just heard that another work, The Jogger, has got past the first round of the British Screenplay Awards.
Click here to email: mailto:martin.dawes@sheffieldnewspapers.co.uk
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Friday 25 May 2012
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