As Erin mentioned in a previous post, one of the exciting things about Flickr is that we’re able to access some really fantastic images which reflect the lifestyles and people of specific regions around the world. This is great news for our customers who are searching for imagery with a local flavor.

Aside from great travel imagery, we want to find strong lifestyle imagery. The challenge is to find images that aren’t too cliche but not so random that we lose the connection. Below are some examples of imagery we’ve selected for the German speaking regions so far.

Do you think we’re getting it right?

85154229 Claudia Probst/Getty Images

85149179, Johannes Henseler/Flickr

85154089, Thomas Lottermoser/Flickr

85111840 Photography ©Eke Meidaner

85421437, German Meyer/Flickr

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Vict?ria Pe?afiel/Flickr

I can’t help but notice that the Flickr partnership is turning up a very different type of imagery from what we normally edit.

They’re not all “slice of life” pictures either — there’s some really considered, crafted work from hugely talented photographers. What I get a kick out of is the tiny details of people’s lives – the little moments that say or reveal a lot, which are local but universal.

The shot above from a photographer in Barcelona is a great example – you have all the intimacy of family life, care and protection, animal instinct – maybe also competition! It’s shot through (excuse the  pun) with humor and warmth. This is true of a lot of Flickr imagery and is amazingly hard to recreate.

Images like this also have a general appeal, despite (or maybe because?) they’re intensely individual.  Like a lot of the Flickr stuff I love, if you read a description of the shot you’d struggle to visualize it – but it works.

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“In today’s society, our animal instincts are smothered by daily modern life, city-living and constant technological developments. Man is an animal, but he no longer knows it.“

The current European campaign for Wrangler, which launched this summer, wants to re-awaken our instincts. This is a back-to-nature campaign without tree-hugging, but truly interesting visuals instead. Check it out on YouTube and here.

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When do you use models, and when don’t you use models? It’s a difficult question. Authenticity can be tricky to capture when you are staging a scene…especially if the subject matter is trend setting musicians and hipster youth culture, ala Santogold and Spank Rock. The shoot can easily go awry because of variables, such as, casting, styling, or art direction. Here are some images from a recent shoot gone right by The Smith Collection. The success of the shoot had much to do with the fact that the models cast are in a real band and already had their own personal style. To add a little more flavor, the photographer additionally hired a graffiti artist to create some original backgrounds for the group. The shoot also hits the mark because the subjects are performers and look natural and comfortable in what they are being asked to do.

Smith Collection/Getty Images

Smith Collection/Getty Images

Smith Collection/Getty Images

Smith Collection/Getty Images

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I don’t know if it’s because of Britney Spear’s sister or Bristol Palin or what, but lately I have been thinking about the space females enter when they are evolving from girls into women. While young mothers are certainly a hot tabloid topic right now, I am more interested in less extreme examples of this threshold crossing. It can be argued that childhood and adulthood are biological categories, but they are also social constructs that change depending upon their historical context.

During the Industrial Revolution (pre-child labor laws), US children worked in factories, whereas today, a large percentage of college graduates move back home to live with their parents. When does a person become an adult? When does a girl become a woman? I don’t have a definite answer, but no photographer explores this idea better than Kanako Sasaki.

Kanako Sasaki/Getty Images

When I look at her photographs, I am taken to a place where innocence and experience co-exist. In this world, the subject’s age is ambiguous: she is at once child-like and emotionally nuanced, unselfconscious yet provocative:

Kanako Sasaki/Getty Images

They bring to mind Balthus’s infamous paintings of Therese.

Kanako Sasaki/Getty Images

And of course, they are beautiful to behold.

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