Thomas Hawk Digital Connection

The NY Times is reporting on a case filed by the NY Civil Liberties Union regarding our right to shoot in the public plazas that surround the exterior of Federal Buildings. From the Times:

Citizens should be allowed to take photos while standing in public spaces near federal buildings, according to a lawsuit filed on Thursday by the New York Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit challenges regulations that prohibit photography on federal property.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Antonio Musumeci, 29, a software developer from Edgewater, N.J.

it goes on:

The lawsuit seeks a court order to bar federal officials from harassing or arresting people taking photos while standing in outdoor public areas by federal buildings. “In our society, people have a clear right to use cameras in public places without being hassled and arrested by federal agents or police,” said Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

It’s great to see the NYCLU supporting photographer’s rights like this.

Thanks to Scott Beale for the heads up!

Photo above of the San Francisco Federal Building from my San Francisco Federal Building set.

I’ve decided to start a new project. This project is going to be called “The Computer is Your Friend.” The project will work like this. Everytime I get some sort of error message or find that I can’t do something on my computer that I want to, I’ll screenshot it and add it to a new set that I’ll host on Picasa.

Once I get 2,000 of these or 5,000 (I’m not sure yet), I’ll try to set up some sort of public installation that cycles the error messages and other screenshot warnings, etc. through an installation loop on Plasma displays. The image above is an example. It’s one of the more interesting error messages I’ve come across from the site Hype Machine (my favorite music site on the web). I’m not sure how long this project is going to take me. I’ll probably have a better idea in the weeks ahead. Of course how much time I spend on my PC vs. my Mac may have something to do with the time it takes to complete the project as well.

I’ve got the first 11 screenshots up now. Many more error messages to come in the weeks ahead.

This project is inspired by watching all of the excellent screenshots that Chris Messina regularly posts to his Flickrstream.

Hot Donkey! the world’s most notorious vandal, Banksy, has hit San Francsico. This time in Chinatown with a peace and love mural complete with an old school doctor checking out the heart with a stethoscope.

Thanks to the world’s bestest Invisible Cirkus for the heads up!

For the past two years Robert Scoble and I have been attending and shooting the Pacific Coast Dream Machines Show together in Half Moon Bay. It’s one of the best car shows in the United States, but is not just limited to cars. There are fire engines, trucks, airplanes (and airplane rides), steam engines, just about every kind of mechanical machine you can imagine.

Anyways, we are going to hang out and shoot the event again this next Sunday, April 25th, 2010. The show starts at 10am. Both Scoble and I will have to leave in the afternoon a little early (he’s going to Israel and I’ve got my son’s baseball game) but I’m looking forward to shooting the morning and part of the early afternoon down there with anyone else who can make it.

If you like shooting cars this is one of the best places to shoot cars I’ve ever been. Everybody is totally cool with open photography and are happy to have you photograph their vehicles. They also do a monster truck show (photo above) which is great to shoot as well.

I set up an upcoming page for the photowalk here. Come on out if you can make it!

More details on the event can be found at the event’s official website here. The event is $20 per adult, $10 for seniors, $10 for 11-17 and free for kids 10 and under and includes parking. The event is a fundraiser for the Adult Coastside Day Center.

You can check out my Flickr photos of the event from the past two years here.

This morning Blake Irving penned a post over at Yahoo Anectdotal, Yahoo’s Corporate Blog, yodeling hello to the world in his new capacity as Chief Product Officer at Yahoo (staring May 17th officially). What follows is a comment that I left on his welcoming post regarding what I feel are serious issues regarding the management of Flickr. I’m also posting it here as an open letter to Blake in his new role. Good luck at Yahoo Blake and I hope that you can help bring a new era of transparency and openness to Yahoo’s Products.

Blake,

Welcome to Yahoo. Congratulations on your new role and I wish you all the success that you and Yahoo truly deserve.

I hope you take a serious look at some of the mismanagement of the Flickr product. As one of the most active users of this service for over five years and a huge Flickr fan, I’ve been troubled by the censorship at Flickr, especially over the past few years. I’ve been troubled by the censorship I’ve experienced on my own account personally. And I’ve also been troubled by the broader censorship that Flickr engages in on accounts almost every day as well as institutionally in places like Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Korea and Germany.

Yahoo should stand for a free and open internet.

Yahoo has in Flickr one of of the most important cultural jewels of our lifetime. Great care should be taken in how you manage it.

Did you know that if Flickr staff delete your account that there is no way of getting it back — even if they delete it by mistake. That it’s permanent and irrevocable. That you could lose all of your photos, meta data and most significantly the rich socially created meta data around your photos spanning in some cases many years? Data that does not belong to Yahoo but that Yahoo is entrusted (and in many cases paid) to care for.

Yahoo’s users deserve not to have to worry about the destruction of our data based on the capricious mood or whim of someone on Flickr staff on any given Monday. Saner policies should be implemented that take an account private before total, full and complete destruction.

Flickr users (agan myself included) should not be censored for expressing ways to improve the site that don’t tow the company line. They should not be blacklisted from popular areas of the site for calling out bad business practices.

Over the years I’ve gotten the feeling that Yahoo simply does not care about Flickr. That it’s largely viewed as a barely profitable annoyance at the company.

I’d be happy to talk with you more about these concerns personally if you had an interest in really turning Flickr into what it could and should be.

Good luck in your new role at Yahoo. I’ve also posted this note as an open letter on my blog.

Thomas Hawk

Yesterday while shooting in Downtown Oakland I ran into a police action. Apparently a 59 year old San Francisco man was assaulted in broad daylight and mugged pretty bad. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the man who was attacked remains on critical life support system today.

More details from the SF Chronicle.