I was looking at some photos around my home town on Flickr this morning when I discovered that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney had geotagged some photos in my area. That got me to search for all the major candidates on Flickr. I discovered some interesting info (current as of September 5, 2007).
| Candidate | Number of Photos | Most Recent Photo Date | Photos Titled | Geotagged | Photo Rights | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-Joe Biden | No Account | |||||
| D-Hillary Clinton | No Account | |||||
| D-Chris Dodd | 580 | August 31, 2007 | Mostly | Yes | Copyright | Appears to break each event into its own set. Mostly photos of Dodd giving speeches or at events with supporters. |
| D-John Edwards | 3,526 | September 4, 2007 | No | Yes | Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 | Actually uses collections and sets. Extensive and well-organized collection. |
| D-Mike Gravel | No Account | |||||
| D-Dennis Kucinich | 314 | August 29, 2007 | No | Mostly No | Copyright | Mostly older photos. Not organized into sets. Most recent photos are a banner ad and a myspace profile shot. |
| D-Barack Obama | 5,371 | September 5, 2007 | Yes | Yes | Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 2.0 | Lots and lots of photos of supporters, rather than just Obama giving speeches and handshakes. Uses collections to sort sets of photos by state. |
| D-Bill Richardson | 1,035 | September 4, 2007 | Some | No | Copyright | A little disorganized, but generally high-quality photos. |
| R-Sam Brownback | 213 | August 10, 2007 | No | No | Copyright | First few photos are newspaper clippings and newsletters. Lots of photos of little kids with Brownback stickers. |
| R-Rudy Giuliani | 226 | August 30, 2007 | Yes | No | Copyright | Mostly photos of Giuliani giving speeches. Has only one set with only 3 photos in it. Photos from one event are all given the same title. |
| R-Mike Huckabee | 1,119 | August 27, 2007 | No | No | Copyright | Contains a set of photos featuring Huckabee running 5K in a pair of shorts that are about half the length they should be. Mostly shots of Huckabee giving speeches and meeting people. |
| R-Duncan Hunter | No Account | |||||
| R-John McCain | No Account | |||||
| R-Ron Paul | 419 | August 14, 2007 | No | A few | Copyright | An unusually high number of photos of Paul's back. Photographer should be less shy. Half the photos taken at Google are in black-and-white for some reason. |
| R-Mitt Romney | 1,864 | August 26, 2007 | No | Yes | Copyright | Photos extensively categorized into sets. All of the photos on the first two pages (with one exception) are of Romney speaking or shaking hands with someone. |
| R-Tom Tancredo | No Account | |||||
I think that it's a great idea for political candidates to upload campaign photos to Flickr. It's a chance to recognize volunteers and (with geotagging) promote the candidate to the communities that they visit.
A well-run Flickr account, like Barack Obama's, also reflects that A) the candidate (or his staff) is up-to-date on modern web technology and B) that the candidate is willing to pay attention to detail.
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