Those who've seen the thoughtful (if slow) film 'Smoke' may recall cigarshop owner Harvey Keitel's hobby: at 8 (or is it 9?) each morning, he snaps a tripod-steadied picture of his humble streetcorner. In a poignant moment, William Hurt's character leafs through one of Keitel's calendar-galleries only to stop cold over a shot of his long-dead wife hurrying, unaware, to work.

Which raises an old question: how many tourist snapshots, the world over, does each of us appear in? Hard to reckon this directly, but why not take a page from the 'Terraserver' and other such publicly searchable satellite image archives?

Here's the plan (at least while film remains popular): equip each 35mm consumer camera to record latitude-longitude and time data on each frame (perhaps shot direction could be recorded too...). Have print labs jointly archive scans of film they process (privacy, shmivacy! this is Total Snapshot Awareness, people) into a database searchable by latitude/longitude, time of shot, and location of lab. Or, if archiving is to be elective, -discount the processing- with funds from advertising on the archive.

Now, to find incidental tourist pics of yourself/loved ones/your car/your bed &c., search the archive by shot location and date range, while maximizing distance of processing lab from said location. Or just explore the world randomly -- at street level. It's earth's family album.
-- n-pearson, Aug 20 2003

timeAndPlaceSite http://www.halfbake...ea/timeAndPlaceSite
Seems very close to this idea by [lardus] [krelnik, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

you, in somebody else's vacation photos http://www.halfbake...20vacation_20photos
Somewhat related idea by [ravenswood] [krelnik, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Why does it need to use film? How about a website to which the public can upload digital photographs (like [DrCurry]'s fine examples). The supporting database indexes each upload by latitude / longitude / date-time.
-- angel, Aug 20 2003


Seems to overlap a couple of existing ideas, see links.
-- krelnik, Aug 20 2003


Yup, [lardus]'s is basically the same idea, minus 1) the sorting by site-to-lab distance to make tourists' (vs. locals') shots easier to find, and 2) the potential discount scheme.
-- n-pearson, Aug 20 2003


How many other folks' webcams do you appear on, [ravenswood]?!
-- n-pearson, Aug 20 2003


None, since we got rid of all of those wireless cams.
-- UnaBubba, Aug 25 2003



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