Photo by John Florea
LIFE.com launches today. From the press release: "More than 7 million photos from the Life and Getty Images photo collections are now available to consumers in the largest online photography site. The curated site features both rarely seen and iconic photos from the 1850s through today. More than 3,000 new photos from Getty Images award-winning photographers will be added to the site daily. Users will be able to rate, email, share, purchase, license photos and explore their world through the world’s greatest images in this user-friendly web site."
Mike
...And I almost added, one hopes that eventually they'll learn to set the levels on their black-and-white pictures properly. There didn't seem to be a nice way to phrase that.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Johnston | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 10:15 AM
Yeah, auto-levels does better than a few I've seen via the Google Images path.
3000 pictures a day is a lot. But they've probably got more than one person doing it, so that would help.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 10:40 AM
"in the largest online photography site"
I think they're missing an adjective. Have they not heard of a little outfit called Flickr?
Posted by: Martin Doonan | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 10:41 AM
Mike,
Really, many thanks for all you put on your website, esp. things like this! I would have no knowledge of these opportunities, save your efforts! Please let me know if you have worked out an arrangement for someone to subscribe by using a credit card. I completely trust your site with that, and I don't like to use PayPal.
Bill Corbett
Advance, NC
Posted by: Bill Corbett | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 11:46 AM
I have to agree with the Bohemian -- I took a look and thought, so what?
Posted by: Frank Nachtman | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 12:48 PM
Thanks Mike--I can now check the photos of the first photographer I worked for, "William Vandivert"--Great stuff--So far I found 2 photos--one was reversed and they hadn't corrected the color.
The best part were the stories he told me about covering WWII. One was when they found a bunch of bones around where Hitler died (thinking it might be him)--turned out they were from a pig. Close enough.
Thanks again Mike for the link.
Posted by: Carl Leonardi | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 12:50 PM
Any chance of a primer on the all-time iconic Life images?
Posted by: tom c. | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 02:29 PM
They need to improve the search on that site. Tried searching by date -- no good. There must be an advanced search page but I couldn't find it.
Posted by: John Krill | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 04:54 PM
If you poke around enough you can find the picture of Lee Miller in Hitler's bathtub.
http://www.life.com/archive/wouldyourather/page/2
Of course they don't mention who she is. Certainly one of the most interesting life stories of a photographer I can think of.
Posted by: hugh crawford | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 10:46 PM
Jury is still out on this one. I mean, I really applaud the effort but the way the site is laid out I feel like I am reading a tabloid. Let's hope over time it improves as I can really see myself spending a lot of time there.
Posted by: Ned | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 11:08 PM
"one hopes that eventually they'll learn to set the levels on their black-and-white pictures properly."
Good lord! No kidding! They look like copies of copies of the original press run.
That said, the naysayers need to get in a contemplative mood and just gently surf the site (the editors have done pretty well on big themes). There are some stunners there to be sure (in glorious 72-dpi) but it is more a monstrous-huge, rich historical resource.
Dave
Posted by: Dave Fultz | Tuesday, 31 March 2009 at 11:21 PM