While it’s easy to compare Facebook and Google+ because they’re both social networks and write off the latter because it doesn’t have quite as many users, Google+ has done an amazing job building tools that help facilitate strong communities. Google’s social network is only a few months old, but it has quickly become a top destination for photographers to hang out, chat, and share their work.

Some of these photographers decided that it would be a great idea to put together a book of their work. The twist is, the proceeds from the book are going to Kiva, its chosen charity. They call the book the “Plus One Collection“.

The project has turned into a standard book, e-book, a limited edition version, and soon, it will have an accompanying iOS app. With 520 photographers taking part by offering up their work for free, the book is yet another example of how people are leveraging Google’s social platform to express themselves, whether they’re a professional or not.

Here’s how the project creators explain the idea:

The idea is simple.

We, a group of photographers from an online community on social network Google+ thought, hey, why not publish a photography book together? We spent a lot of time talking photography online, share and look at each other’s work, and even meet together to socialize and shoot. Why not collaborate on a project together? That’s how the idea of this book was born. When the call to contribute came, 520 photographers, both known and less known, from all over the world responded, willing to donate their art for the project.

The cost for the limited edition printed version of the book is $200, and all of the net proceeds go to Kiva. A standard version will be available on February 21st. You can see a full list of photographers that made it into the printed version here.

➤ Plus One Collection

Once the premiere community for photographers, Flickr has struggled to stay relevant in recent years. The company has been slow to innovate and adapt, facing fierce competition from hot alternatives like Facebook and Instagram. But for photographers who remain committed to Flickr as their platform of choice, the Pro account has been the way to go. With Flickr Pro, uploads and storage are unlimited, files are available in higher resolution, video is high definition, detailed stats are provided and there are no ads. Today, Flickr announced new options for upgrading to Pro, and all subscriptions will now automatically renew (with a reminder of course, and users can cancel at any time and continue using Pro until their subscription is set to end).

The cost per year remains at $24.95, as it has been for many years. A slightly higher priced three month option is available for $6.95, and a two-year subscription now costs $44.95 (previously it was $47.95).

The new options are good for those who aren’t ready to commit to a full year, or those who subscribe every two years and now save a few dollars. The three month pricing plan is also ideal for those of you with photos that are stuck on Flickr that you’d like to move somewhere else. But Flickr’s also used the pricing changes as an opportunity to make its pricing seem more appealing than it really is. As I mentioned, a one-year subscription has been $24.95 for many years, but Flickr now advertises it on the upgrade page as a savings of $2.85 over the three month subscription (which would cost $27.80 over the course of a year). It’s not saving money; you’re just losing money with a three month subscription.

As Thomas Hawk points out, they use the same misleading logic for the two-year subscription, calling it a savings of $10.65 when it’s only $3 lower than the previous two-year subscription. Nonetheless, Hawk still believes it’s a “screaming good deal for a photographer like me.”

For casual photographers, however, sites like Google+ and Facebook often make more sense, and Flickr will have to do more than slightly tweak their pricing to stay relevant. The company promised big things and a renewed sense of focus for 2012, so Flickr users like myself can hope they’ll live up to that promise in the coming months.

➤ Upgrade to Flickr Pro

Two weeks ago, we reported that Kodak was looking into filing for bankruptcy if it couldn’t sell off enough of its patents. Kodak licenses some these to companies like LG, Motorola, and Nokia. A week after that report, Kodak sued both Apple and HTC for infringing on some of those patents.

Today, the company is adding Samsung to the list of those being sued for patent infringement. The lawsuit singles out Samsung tablets specifically for using some of its technology without asking. The patents that Kodak says Samsung is using without permission center around the automatic handling of photos, such as sending them through email. Here are the five in question:

U.S. Patent No. 6,292,218 – “Electronic Camera For Initiating Capture of Still Images While Previewing Motion Images”
U.S. Patent No. 7,210,161 – “Automatically Transmitting Images from an Electronic Camera to a Service Provider Using a Network Configuration File”
U.S. Patent No. 7,742,084 – “Network Configuration File for Automatically Transmitting Images from an Electronic Still Camera”
U.S. Patent No. 7,453,605 – “Capturing Digital Images to be Transferred to an E-Mail Address”
U.S. Patent No. 7,936,391 – “Digital Camera with Communications Interface for Selectively Transmitting Images over a Cellular Phone Network and a Wireless LAN Network to a Destination”

It appears that these patents involving the transmission of photos are the same ones the company is suing Apple and HTC over. Before it sells off its patents or files for bankruptcy, the company must defend its assets, and the company certainly isn’t being quiet about it. As our own Brad McCarty points out, Kodak has become a dinosaur in digital photography, since it hasn’t executed on its own social offerings:

Kodak has been touting its social sharing functions for the past couple of years and the idea behind them is good. However, the implementation is simply incomplete. Instead of having a one-touch share button that allowed you to directly upload to Facebook, that button allows you to flag a picture. Then you have to hook up your camera to your computer, use Kodak’s software and finally upload it to the service of your choice.

If Kodak is going down, it certainly isn’t going down quietly. However, it looks like most of the damage to the company was self-inflicted.

Now that 2011 is behind us, the new year allows for new players to step into the startup game with brand new ideas and visions. Even though companies like Facebook, Apple, Twitter, and Instagram had massive success last year, there are still areas that are just begging for a tech makeover.

Some of the innovation will most certainly come from giant companies with a lot of money to spend and huge teams, but I think we’ll be surprised by how many smaller startups will take on big problems in 2012.

If I were working on something new, these are the areas I’d hone in on with laser focus.

Private social networks

Path tried to set the world on fire last year with its app that allows you to interact with under 150 people. It’s the anti-Facebook, if you will. With version 2.0, Path is closer to creating an experience that I believe more people will want to participate in this year, but the companies mobile-only approach is leaving a lot of opportunities on the table. I’d love to see a few other teams try to tackle this concept using the web, since it’s a clear path to bringing in mainstream users like Mom and Dad.

Google is on to something with its “Circles” concept for Google+, but it’s difficult to escape the feeling that you’re on a platform with millions of other people. A simple and personalized web-centric alternative to Path could really make private social networking hot in 2012. What Path is lacking though is the feeling of collaboration that is commonplace in a small circle of friends or family members. The app is still focused on the concept of the stream, and I’d like to see someone else take a different approach.

Local

Look for the local boom to hit us at some point this year. With apps like foursquare and Facebook letting us share our locations and interact with local businesses, there is still an opportunity for someone to build a platform that is made only to interact with your favorite coffee shop or restaurant.

Imagine being able to know things about a restaurant in real-time, like how many people are there, what the specials are, and even what waiters and waitresses are working that night. Making your customers feel like they have insight into how you operate will build a better relationship with them and keep them coming back.

Telephony

Everyone jokes about how we don’t use the telephone anymore, and it’s not because we don’t like to talk to people. The lack of innovation when it comes to telephony is absolutely shocking. The hottest thing to happen to the phone in the past 5 years was visual voicemail from Apple. There are companies working on re-imagining our experiences on the telephone already, but this is something that will be on fire in 2012. Skype gave us VOIP for computers, added some video, and that’s about it.

In the near future, we should be able to engage in synced gaming, note-taking, and other interactions while we’re on the phone. If you’re an AT&T user, you know how great it is to be able to check your email or the web for something while you’re talking on the phone. Sorry Verizon customers. This type of interaction needs to be made easier, and you should be able to challenge someone to a game of Angry Birds right in the middle of a conversation.

The technology is there, it’s time to innovate.

TV and web integration

The various hacks for Apple TV have me excited about the future of the television. This innovation is Apple’s for the taking, but with the potential for a fully interactive TV from Apple, comes a whole new platform for developers to build on.

Start thinking about what apps you’d like to have open while you’re watching TV or a movie. Text messages, incoming phone calls, email, Tweets, and live chat are the easy ones. But if you think about all of the data on the web that can be pulled into a broadcast contextually, the possibilities are absolutely mind-blowing. I’ve played around with Google TV, and its widget approach is just not going to do it. A seamless interactive experience on the television will surely be ours by the end of 2012.

Photography

Don’t run away, developers. Instagram doesn’t own the universe yet. There is a lot of room for innovation when it comes to photography on mobile devices. While Instagram has built a fantastic community around streams of photos with filters, there are sure to be more things to do with photos.

I’d love to see developers that use photography for do-it-yourself animation or do smarter things with the meta data stored with your photos. For example, Apple’s Camera Roll could surely use its own refresh. It tells me nothing about my photographs. I’d also like to see apps that help me stitch together similar photos based on colors or objects in them. Again, the technology is there, but hasn’t been put to full use yet.

Small and fast wins

These are the areas that I see the most room for improvement and innovation in 2012. The platforms are there, technology is there, and the talent to build great things are most certainly there. It won’t be the big companies that wow us in 2012, it’ll be the smaller teams who eventually build something focused and user-friendly that will.

What areas do you feel are ripe for innovation this year? Tell us in the comments.

Welcome to our first post in the Chasing Photons series, where every Tuesday we will feature one photographer who shares their photography online, using the likes of Google+, Flickr, 500px, or even their own website.

Our first photographer to be featured is Roman Tripler, a 34-year old Art Director, living in Hennef, Germany, a small town near Cologne.

You can check out Roman’s full body of work on his website and his Google+ profile.

Nancy Messieh: What’s in your camera bag?

Roman Tripler (RT): Not much. I had believed for some time that I’d need a lot of equipment, but sold almost everything. I have my little Nikon D60, with an 18-55mm standard lens, a few tools to clean my camera and business cards.

NM: Did you study photography or are you self-taught?

RT: No, I did not study. My ‘studies’ consist of talking to people that interest me. I also read and hear a lot about photography and photographers that have moved the world, and I sometimes speak to gallery owners and ‘masters of photography.’I'm not the shy type, which helps.

NM: When/how did you decide to become a photographer?

RT: I haven’t really decided yet. I have been (not seriously) photographing since childhood, and was always interested in any kind of pictures. I decided only three years ago to improve my skills by buying a DSLR and to study more seriously than I have done before.

NM: What does photography mean to you?

RT: I love photos. Photos can tell stories in a fraction of a second. Photos are literature for my eyes, when they’re good. Photos have the ability to arouse a certain feeling inside of me. Only try to describe a mood! You will try to use images, metaphors. Taking photos is to find these moods and try to transport it to other people. It might sound terribly dreamy, but I believe, that empathy with knowledge and background is the key for good photographs.

NM: If you have to choose one photo taken by someone else that you wish you had taken – what would it be?

RT: Many, many, many, but that’s their work, not mine. I would prefer to escape the question and say that there are many photos where I would have liked to look through the viewfinder at the same moment. I would like to make the same full experience that the photographer has made in this complex situations where great photographs have been created.

NM: Define your photography in one sentence.

I portray the world of humans as I see them.

NM: What is the one photo you are most proud of?

RT: This I have not yet taken. I really, really love a handful of my thousands of pictures, most of them are of family or special situations, which not everybody would understand.

Many responses to my photographs which I like very much are not expected, many reactions surprise me. Look – a lot of artists avoid social media, because they are afraid that they will receive criticism – not me. My pride is often questioned, but I learn.

NM: Where do you prefer to post your photos online? Why?

RT: I use some platforms to talk and learn about my photography. I use it to meet people all over the world and get new inspirations. I want to learn – faster than others – to become a better photographer. I’ve tried out many platforms, but I’ve reduced them to just a few.

Through the Internet, I count great photographers as my friends online – but also in real life. Siegfried Hansen from Hamburg or Johannes Barthelmes from Berlin, only to name two. One of my goals is to join the Leica Gallery. I’m saving money for a M9-P, that’s a big dream!

NM: Where do you love to go to shoot – whether it’s a city, country, or even a specific place.

RT: Every place is perfect. As a German, some places have the “exotic factor” for me, where it’s easier to take impressive photos, but it doesn’t matter where I shoot. I’m very open.

NM: Who or what inspires your photography? Who are your influences?

RT: A lot of photographers – old masters as well as modern photographers: J. Nachtwey, E. Erwitt, H.-C. Bresson, R. Doisneau, V. Maier, Brassai, Man Ray, Weegee, G. Winogrand, J. Meyerowitz, M. Epstein, S. Schneider, S. Salgado, W. Klein, B. Gilden, A. Stieglitz and many more!

I’ve surely forgotten many important photographers – they occurred to me spontaneously. They all have a special quality,  there’s not enough space here to describe tha. Their pictures touch me and I’d like to touch people like they did. That inspires me.

NM: Where do you stand on using Photoshop – acceptable or not. Why?

RT: Photoshop is a tool. Nothing more. I’m a professional in Photoshop, so I can be better than others with it. The problem is to manipulate pictures. I won’t do that. I use Photoshop like photographers used their tools in the darkroom – probably even with less intensity.

NM: Do you have any pre/post-photography rituals

RT: I try to reach the quality of analog film. With analog film you automatically get your special look. It takes me a maximum of 5 minutes to convert a photograph to that, my look. For an exhibition I might work harder on a photograph to optimize specific details, for Web use, a few minutes always suffices.

I don’t like the modern digital look – oversharpen, high dynamic range or the extremely colorful look. Mostly I think, I ‘shoot’ and I develop in black and white, and if I see a photograph in color, it has to be developed a bit more desaturated.

NM: What do you listen to when you’re editing?

RT: Nothing special. My taste in music varies very much. From Classic to Modern – there’s so much available. It can be Pergolesi, Prodigy or Pink Floyd and many more, but it must have a certain quality level.

NM: What do you do to jump start your photography if you’re blocked? (If that happens)

RT: Ask me again in 50 years. Since I was young I’ve always kept an eye open and if I don’t see anything interesting, it doesn’t matter.

NM: I see there’s a lot of street photography in your albums – how do you go about taking photos of people in the street? Have you ever had any problems?

RT: I don’t have any problems. I always try to communicate with people – before, during or after I’m shooting. It always depends on the situation. I don’t want to change a situation. If that happens by accident I rarely take a photograph or keep it. And I never mind deleting a photograph if I get the feeling someone has a problem with me taking a photograph of them.

NM: Any advice for aspiring photographers?

RT: Go around, study human beings and take pictures. That’s what I enjoy. Don’t be fooled by how “impressive” an image might look. The content is most important, everything else is just make-up.

Check out some of Roman’s photography below:

The photo accompanying this article has nothing to do with the actual written content. Sort of. It’s a photo that I came across on Flickr, taken by Ben Fredericson, and being a sucker for bokeh I saved it on my computer.

The photo was posted on Flickr under a Creative Commons license, allowing others to use it pretty much any way they want to, as long as they credited the photographer.

This is possibly the simplest, and most common, way in which Creative Commons comes into play on a daily basis on the Internet. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

What is Creative Commons?

A lot of people probably don’t know that Creative Commons is actually a non-profit organisation. Based in Mountain View, California, Creative Commons was founded in 2001 by  Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred, in an effort to make creative works available for re-use. Creative Commons’ slogan sums it up perfectly, “Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally.”

Creative Commons encourages artists and creators to share their work under a Creative Commons License. This is where it starts to get a bit complicated because there are several permutations to the license, and you have to understand each one before deciding which one is right for you.

Creative Commons Licenses

There are six main types of Creative Commons Licenses.

Attribution: This license gives over the most rights possible. It lets your share, remix, and build upon the work, as long as the rights holder is credited. You can also use the work for commercial purposes.

Attribution Share Alike: This license is identical to Attribution, with the added condition of licensing your new work under the same terms. This is the license used by Wikipedia.

Attribution No Derivatives: This license allows you to share the work, both commercially and non-commercially as long as it is unchanged and is credited.

Attribution Non-Commercial: This license allows you to remix, tweak and build upon the work, as long as it is credited and is for non-commercial purposes. The new work does not have to be licensed in the same way.

Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: This license is identical to Attribution Non-Commercial with the added condition of licensing new creations under the same terms.

Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: The most restrictive license allows you to share the work, as long as it is credited, non-commercial, and is not altered in any way.

It should also be understood, before choosing to use a Creative Commons license – it is non-revocable. If you choose to allow people to share your work, and decide at a later point in time to remove the license, any copies that exist in the wild, will stay right there. You can’t stop people from using them. Which in reality means that even under the most restrictive license, once your image is out there, it’s out there for good. Removing the license only stops users from downloading your copy.

What is the difference between Creative Commons and Public Domain?

Public Domain and Creative Commons are not to be confused with one another. Works in the Public Domain are free to use without any restrictions. Shakespeare and Beethoven’s works are an example of literature and music which exist in the public domain. An creative copyrighted work enters the public domain a certain number of years after the creator’s death, but the exact time period differs from country to country. For example, works in the US are copyrighted for the life of the author, plus an additional 70 years after death.

Works in the public domain can be used in any way you want – sharing, remixing, adapting – the sky is the limit. Just like with Creative Commons, the ability to produce derivative works is a catalyst for creativity.

Where can you find Creative Commons content?

Creative Commons content can be text, images, videos, software – in other words – just about anything. So where do you go to find that content?

Videos

YouTube recently introduced a creative commons licensing option for its users. YouTube is providing only one Creative Commons license, namely Attribution, the license which gives pretty much free reign over what you can do with the content.

Go to YouTube’s Editor where you can access a fully searchable database of thousands of videos contributed from YouTube users, as well as organisations such as Al Jazeera and Voice of America.

In addition, YouTube makes it easy to edit, rotate, combine, remix and add effects to the videos right there on the site.

Video artists and citizen journalists both have a lot to gain out of this move, and it’s a perfect example of how Creative Commons is a breeding ground for creativity.

When sharing your creations on YouTube, you can also license the video under the same terms, even though you aren’t obliged to. If used the right way, we could end up with a domino effect of hundreds of thousands of videos all licensed under Creative Commons freely available on YouTube.

Photographs

The most obvious place you can go to find high quality Creative Commons photos is Flickr. With almost 190 million photos and counting on Flickr, it’s interesting to see which types of licenses are most commonly used. With about 55 million photos each, Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives and Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike are the most popular options.

It is understandable that an artist or photographer would not want their work to be used commercially without payment. But for bloggers, non-profit organisations, and even digital and photo-manipulation artists, there’s a wealth of images to choose from. And with the help of third-party services like Compfight, it’s even easier to navigate the smorgasbord of awesome photographs.

You can also use Google  to find Creative Commons images, amongst other things. For images, go to Google Image’s Advanced Search, and at the bottom of the search form, go to Usage Rights to choose from several options in the drop-down menu.

Text

Besides the obvious example of Wikipedia, there are other content providers who have licensed their work under Creative Commons, such as Al Jazeera Blogs. Al Jazeera has been at the forefront of making all of its content available for re-use, including videos on YouTube and photographs on Flickr.

Other examples of text freely available online for re-use including WikiTravel, as well as a long list of fiction and non-fiction books.

Audio

Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor is one of the musicians who has always been far ahead of his time in the way the band’s music is disseminated, and has even earned them the label, The First Open Source Band. Nine Inch Nails released the creative commons album Ghosts I-IV in 2008.

The experiment didn’t do much for the music industry’s claims that peer-to-peer file sharing is detrimental to their sales. The license that Nine Inch Nails chose for the album allowed users to share it in any way they chose, as long as it was non-commercial. Meaning if you wanted to put it on the ThePirateBay, so that others could download it from you, you were free to.

Despite that, the album earned $1.6 million in its first week alone, and topped Amazon’s list of best-selling albums for the year.

They also created something of a film festival, inviting fans to create videos accompanying the music.

How does Creative Commons make us more creative?

Nine Inch Nails’ move with their Creative Commons album and film festival is the perfect example of the positive effects of the practice. Using their fame and fan-following, they were able to spark an artistic movement.

If a photograph, a work of art, or even software, is licensed under Creative Commons, it gives other users a springboard to work from. It’s the encapsulation of inspiration.

When you can create derivative works from a photograph, for example, it becomes like a creative brainstorming session, where two people can contribute to one work of art, regardless of their location, nationality or even language.

If a writer licenses their work under terms which allow for remixing, an indie film-maker could potentially create a movie based on the work. That kind of access to creative information to work with is priceless.

Because of the non-commercial aspect, Creative Commons can also push us to create art for art’s sake, and no other reason.

In other words, Creative Commons brings out the best in us.