.: Thing #7 of “23 Things”

Explore Flickr

I thought about opening an account in Flickr and upload some pictures, but I already have a website with family pictures in Windows Live SkyDrive, so I decided to just explore Flickr, search for an interesting picture and comment on it here.
In the Army I was an Apache helicopter armament/electrician, therefore I searched for “Apache helicopter” (AH-64A). This search took me to a ton of good pictures, but one caught my attention:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/wparsons/3911403106/ by Warren Parsons

Warren Parsons labels this helicopter “Apache AH-64A”, but this helicopter is a “Longbow AH-64D”. I worked with both of these helicopters.
This picture is special because it is not easy to take a picture right under the helicopter when it is landing right on top of you or when it is hovering only a few dozen of feet above you. Only the soldiers who work with these helicopters are allowed to stand on the pad when it is landing; and not all the soldiers; only the “armament guys” which are ready to run towards the helicopter and begin loading/unloading the missiles, rockets and the 30 mm gun. Not even the pilots are allowed to do that. The enemy never gets to see the Apache this close… normally they die without ever knowing what hit them. The “fuel guys” must wait until the Apache completely lands and is properly grounded. The armament guys are there, waiting by the ammunition boxes and are always too busy and tired to be taking pictures of this nature.
Another reason why this picture is so difficult to take is because during the landing, a “shower” of debris flies towards you. On top of this, the “wind” created by the blades of the helicopter which is much stronger during landing can throw you off your feet. Usually the armament pad chief, with one or two soldiers, waits for the landing squatting down and facing away from the helicopter.
I also searched for Apache pictures using Google to compare the results. I went over 30 pages of pictures and I couldn’t find one similar to this one.
I had the rare opportunity to take pictures in 1997 during a training exercise. I was a Specialist then and my platoon sergeant let my take pictures for an hour. I had just bought a new digital camera and since in 1997 digital cameras were a “novelty”, everyone was interested in seeing the results. In one of the pictures you can see the rocks flaying at me. I jumped right before they reached me and the camera!

Flickr is a good service for picture sharing and it is evolving to include videos. I really liked the “Flickr Services”, especially “Retrievr” and “Mappr”. Retrievr “lets you search and explore in a selection of Flickr images by drawing a rough sketch and then seeing which of our interesting photos come up as a match.” Mappr “makes it possible to map photos with geographic location tags.” You can also do this with Flickr Maps.

Perhaps the most useful feature in Flickr is the ability to form, joint or search groups. Groups “are a way for people to come together around a common interest, be it a love of small dogs, a passion for food, a recent wedding, or an interest in exploring photographic techniques.”
What I don’t like about Flickr is that you are restricted to find pictures within the Flickr communities as opposed to the freedom that you have when you search pictures using Google. You are guarantee to find a lot more pictures with Google than with Flickr. The downside is that with Google you can find pictures that you don’t really care to see. This is obviously a bad thing, if you want your students to use it. For example, while searching for “Apache Helicopters” I came across some really gruesome pictures (and videos) of Taliban insurgents beheading Russian soldiers during the Afghan-Russian war of the eighties.
Another important thing to consider is the amount of maximum space to upload pictures. Flickr give you only 100 MB per month for pictures while Microsoft Windows Live gives you 25 GB with each hotmail account (I have 4 hotmail accounts). To get an idea, 25 GB is 25 000 000 000 bytes and 100 MB is 100 000 000 bytes, that is, Windows Live gives you 250 times more space. At 100 MB per month it will take you 250 months (20 years!) to reach the space given by Windows Live with one account… a considerable difference right! Of course, for $25 a year you get unlimited space in Flickr.