andrewlighten.com

One of the hidden secrets of flickr is The Commons. It’s an area of the site where various institutions contribute items from their photographic archives.

Lots of institutions are represented: The Smithsonian, National Galleries of Scotland, George Eastman House (founder of Kodak and inventor of roll film), US Library of Congress, and others.

My personal favourite is the collection that the NSW state library are publishing. I like that it’s relatively close to home (give or take ~900km) and I can relate to lots of the images they’re showing. The shot to the left, for example, is rush hour at Kings Cross in 1938. I’ve driven through that area a few times.

The staff are very accessible, too: any comments left against photos where they can add further information are usually responded to pretty quickly.

Some images are foreign to me because I don’t know Sydney super well, but some are very familiar. The shot to the right, for example, is absolutely unmistakable. Any boy growing up in Australia could pick this bloke.

Click through to see the State Library of New South Wales collection. There’s some great photos there, and it’s well worth exploring.

We took The Kids to the velodrome for an hour after dinner last night. Big Kid rode her bike, and we took Little Kid’s plastic trike.

She kept wanting to take it onto the grass in the middle, but eventually managed to sort of complete a lap.

There’s a gallery up on SmugMug with a bunch more photos.