Flickr

After agonising over finding an image for the past week, today I finally had a breakthrough and found one partly due to something GozzieHoon said to me yesterday about my favourite place in Perth. While I don't have a definite favourite, here is an image of somewhere I love in Perth. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dinlin47/3570429682

The image shows the magical time of the change in light late in the day as shown in the photo when the colours of the trees are enhanced and the undergrowth is in shadow. 
Hunting around on Flickr I looked at some of the cultural institutions' images under The Commons which is a great way of sharing these items from the collections, such as the Brooklyn Museum's Egyptian lantern slides from the turn of the 20th century.
Sphinx

modern image of the Sphinx

I also liked how people have posted similar images in their comments which shows the changes over time of these places. I had seen these images before in Archaeological Diggings magazine and looking at the images I imagined how amazing they would have been to an audience, I'm thinking Europeans, who wouldn't have seen anything like it. The craze for all things Egyptian continued in decorating and fashion design took off in the 1920s and 1930s, after seeing images like these. Also due to the archaeological finds occurring at the time such as Tutankhamen.

You can see the influence here in one of the Powerhouse swatches.

Another thing I love about the lantern slides is the tinting, a light wash over the image to suggest the colours. Not quite the true life colouring we expect from today's latest technology but back then it would have been very evocative for the viewers.

So after all this I can see the benefit of adding images from library and cultural heritage institutions to better allow access and as a way of utilising a web service, rather than storing images on their own website. I guess the only issue is with copyrighting and that seems to be sorted by the Creative Commons.