As part of Space For Cycling, we need plenty of imagery, here’s a quick post explaining where we got up to by early March 2014 to help fellow campaigners. Don’t forget our page of ideas and links to data for Space For Cycling continues to be updated.
Original Ward Ask Photos
Here are our original 16 ward ask photos. They’re not perfect so we’ve reshot a few. We’ll upload the reshot ones tomorrow (Friday) for comparison. The original 16 were taken in a single 2-3 hour shoot. We’d recommend taking a bike with a cycle video camera and a stand. That way for 5-10 minutes at each location you can get video as well as photos in less time. And if you shoot video on a handheld camera you can even do multi-shot videos if you feel up to editing that later (we’re not sure yet ourselves!). Unfortunately it was 2-3 hours for a compact borough like Hammersmith and Fulham though we admit we’re not as fit as we thought we were!
Images from sources other than just taking a photo on the street
Here are some other examples of photos or images we’ve discovered that we intend to use for ward asks and where we found them. Note that the old aerial shots and maps are probably hard to credit right for use on LCC asks site, but certainly good if making a web page for an ask on your own site.
Now, sometimes you might just find yourself in the right place at the right time:
Otherwise, sometimes you can use other people’s work, providing it is licensed correctly.
Flickr lets you search their photos for creative commons licensed work. As an example, here are photos with hammersmith and cycling as keywords under that license. We’d recommend contacting any photographer on flickr as a courtesy. We are intrigued to note that the council’s images are here too, though we can probably use them in a post as fair criticism and reporting.
e.g. We want the council to do more to get Hammersmith and Fulham moving by bike
A good explanation of Creative Commons licensing is on Flickr.
You can search other platforms as well using the main Creative Commons search engine.
It’s possible to get old aerial photos from Aerofilms via Britain From Above. These images must link back to the Britain From Above Website (as below). These images can’t be used in a video by our reading of the terms, but can go on a website if linked back. Full details on their site (click download below an image for information).
Getty Images are also now running a program to make some images available for licensing onto blogs. Again, can’t use for Ward Ask Photos directly, but can use in supporting blogs. This provides mostly creative stock photos but in our case lets us use a photo we were unable to otherwise afford which helps illustrate road width. From this we have this rather nice image (but alas the photo of a penny farthing rider on hammersmith bridge isn’t licensed in this way!).
Hammersmith Broadway in 1910
To get a photo in this way:
Go to Getty Images
Similarly you can now get National Library of Scotland scans of London OS Maps via google under a license that permits linked and credited reuse (though again, probably better on a ward ask page or in a video than as a photo)
- Hammersmith Broadway in 1893-6, on Ordnance Survey town plan, courtesy NLS scan hosted by Google Maps
We may yet make use of a montage to help illustrate possibilities. As yet undecided. Example for sake of helping illustrate concept.
In the past when REALLY stuck for imagery we’ve resorted to stills from videos of cycling in London. They’re rarely good enough.
- Putney Bridge from a cycle camera film
We are also toying with using GIFs to try and be very tumblr in our campaigning.
This is from the 1982 GLC video of cycle projects.
Alternately, Vine is an interesting platform for making attention grabbing six second videos. This is from Jeremy Vine’s account (yup bloke from the BBC).