Calling All Ographers

Attention all you videographers, long photographers, phonographers, experimental photographers, and media-ographers of all stripes...

Given Flickr's recent implementation of video, your Seattlest photography komissars sequestered themselves to ponder thoughtfully on the possible implications of YouTube-style videos of last Saturday's kegger, say, or 90 seconds of impertinent poodle tricks on the purity of the photography pool. In the end, the passive voice stepped in and decisions were made. It was decided to make the photo pool a photo-only pool.

We love still photography and would like our photo pool to stay focused on that mode. But we're not snobs. As a commenter on this post noted: "how is it that no one worries about the quality of Flickr being diluted by zillions of still photographs of someone’s keg party?" Agreed. Furthermore, given the amazing quality of the photo pool—at which we gush profusely every time we look for photos—we are interested in seeing what amazing video might turn up. Flickr has decided to allow video, for better and worse, and we want to give it a go.

So, let us introduce Seattlest Moving Images, a companion pool to our exclusive photography pool. Our goal is to encourage and cultivate thoughtful, creative, and experimental uses of video, audio-enhanced photographs, and non-still photography to document Seattle's life. By this we don't necessarily mean high production value (we love lo-fi); we just want something more meaningful and less self-indulgent than YouTube. As a result, we may or may not choose to cull-tivate more actively in this pool.

The quaint name itself hopefully evokes the fascination and charm of an early era when cinema and "talkies" were coming to the fore and people experimented with the format and tinkered with presentation. In that same way, we'd like to see documentation of Seattle that can't be entirely captured in one frame. Additionally, being total suckers for audio and radio, we'd like to see how that format can augment photography, for example:

In any case, we're not looking for anything radically different than what we have in our photography pool: portraying everyday aspects of Seattle in a compelling way or portraying oddities that give Seattle its flavor. Please tag your media/items with the "Seattlest" tag and include the total running time in the description. Additionally, please try to remember to geotag your items with some neighborhood and location tags and/or by placing them on the map.

Once again, that's the Seattlest Moving Images pool. We can't wait to see what you've got.