Places my photographs have been utilized — and some love for the Creative Commons licenses

Gregory Varnum

May 12, 2018

I love taking photographs. I do not consider myself nearly as good at taking them as several people I am fortunate to know, but I try. Photography is at times a part of my work, but I would consider myself much more of an amateur photographer than a professional photographer.

As is the case for many, a combination of the love of taking photographs, the advent of digital photography, and decreasing cost of digital storage means that I have a growing collection of photos. More photos than I could conceivably ever actually utilize myself. I am also fond of videography, but there is a certain appeal to photography that for me results in a larger volume of work.

Some of them are worth sharing, most are not. A few I like to keep for just family and friends, or in rare cases past employers. But that leaves — well to date around 2,600 photographs (and counting!) which I have been able to share more broadly.

I intentionally share almost all of them under Creative Commons licenses (a few I have released in the public domain), and often in multiple media repositories — most notably on Wikimedia Commons. I enjoy seeing my photographs utilized in the sharing of knowledge and information or the telling of creative stories. The Creative Commons license are an important catalyst in making that happen.

The licenses maintained and promoted by the good folks over at Creative Commons allow me to tell people who want to utilize my photographs in their work that I would also like to see that happen — without ever needing to contact me (which — generally neither of us will have time for). Sometimes the outcomes of what they produce does not thrill me. But a vast majority of the time it delights me. I find all of this to be an ongoing and growing motive for continuing to develop my love for photography.

In that spirit, I would like to share with you a mostly random sampling of times when my photographs have been utilized. Enjoy!

Over 50 photographs I have taken are being utilized on various Wikimedia projects, usually English Wikipedia but also projects like Wikidata, English Wikivoyage, and Chinese Wikipedia. It is has been rewarding to see my photographs utilized in a global effort to collect and share the world’s knowledge.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Varnent/Files

Some of the articles these photos have been utilized on include:

My photographs have also been utilized in the sharing of news, opinions, and events with the world. Not always in statements or message I agree with, or in ways I fully understand, but I am happy the authors felt it helped them tell the story. Plus a few I have found particularly amusing.

Here are a few random examples from the past couple of years:

I hope you enjoyed this random walk down photography utilization lane, and special thanks to the good folks at Creative Commons for helping maintain and promote licenses which made the above possible.