History comes alive through photos

It's time to dig out your old photo albums and memory boxes and contribute to an ambitious project that uses photography to help tell the history of the world.

Yeah, that's a big task, but it's also compelling, as the introductory video to HistoryPin (www.historypin.com) attests. In the simplest terms, the project will "pin" photos to their location anywhere on the planet with a time stamp. The project is a collaboration between the London-based organization We Are What We Do and search-engine giant Google.

"Pin your history to the world," is the tagline for the website that invites people to upload photos and share stories about what's pictured. The images and stories are pinpointed to maps and also added to a time line, letting site visitors explore the world through the eyes and words of the contributors. As of today, nearly 15,000 images are posted on the site.

Contributors will need a Google account to participate. Contributors can opt into the project, and contribute images, through their Picassa photo accounts. People can upload photos to the HistoryPin site from any Internet-connected computer.

I was surprised today to see no Las Vegas images have been added to the site. What are you waiting for? Start scanning your old photos and shooting new ones.

I’ll write more about HistoryPin in coming weeks.

You can learn more about HistoryPin:
http://www.historypin.com

Learn more about We Are What We Do:
http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/

Learn more about the project:
http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/pages/historypin/

Special thanks to the NPR Picture Show Twitter feed (@NPRPictureShow) for alerting me about this project:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2010/08/05/129007283/historypin