Saturday 16 January 2010: Together
Every now and then, a blipper comes up with an idea or suggestion so good we have to do something about it. Twigs had precisely such an idea at the start of the year and got in touch to see if we could help make it happen. In her own words:
"Maybe it's the new year that's brought on a bit of a dose of melancholy - near-miss airline bombers, 5-year anniversary of tsunami, crazy gunman and so on - but blip is the place I come to feel positive about all the good people in the world, all the great things they do and all the love they share.
"The proposal: on an agreed date as many blippers as possible post exactly the same blip - a shot of themselves standing with arms outstretched, 'holding hands' with each of their global next door neighbours."
Judging by the reaction she got when she suggested it in the forums, many of you think it's as good an idea as we do. In fact, we think it's so inspired that it should be extended to a week-long special assignment called, simply, 'Together' and include images of people outside the Blip community. We also think it should climax with a global Blip-party a week from now...
So, shall we make it happen?
Good. Here's the plan:
1. Between now and midday GMT next Friday (22 January) we want you to take and upload as many pictures as you can, exactly like the one above. Photograph yourself, your family, the people you work with or strangers in the street - in short, anyone you can rope into taking part, but make sure there's only one person in each picture.
2. Before uploading, crop your photo so it's square and make sure the hands are positioned half way down the picture, extending just out of frame (again, just like the above).
3. Tag your entries 'bliptogether'.
(Points 2 and 3 are really important - if you don't follow these instructions, we won't be able to include them in the next bit. If you need any help, leave a comment below or ask in the forums.)
4. On the afternoon of Friday 22nd (again, GMT), you'll be able to download a special, purpose-built piece of Blip software called 'Altogether' which will automatically join up the images submitted and present them on your screen through a super-stylish interface.
5. On Saturday the 23rd (a week from now), we want you to use the software and find a way to celebrate all the good things about Blipfoto and the world... Take over your local bar or art gallery, get a couple of video projectors sorted out and cover the walls with the images and throw a party. Hook a video projector up to a car battery and create an outdoor exhibition in a public space. Invite some friends round for dinner, or just pour yourself a cup of tea and watch all the hands joining up on your laptop.
What you do is up to you, but make sure you have fun and make sure you blip it!
Here in Edinburgh, our friends at New Media Scotland have given us the coolest space in town for our local event. We're all going to be there and you're all invited - in person or, providing we can get all the wires plugged into the right places, by live streaming video. More details on that soon, but if you're in or near Edinburgh cancel any plans you had for next Saturday evening and come along.
This could be massive - there's the potential to collect thousands of images from around the world over the next week, but its success is entirely up to the community. If you're taking part, please help make sure everyone else knows about it - link back here from your entries and tell all your blip friends about it (including those we might not have seen for a while). If you fancy organising a meet up, use the forums to organise yourself.
Any questions, drop them below. If not, let's get together and make this happen!
Comments
Blip has pulled out all the stops on this one.
What a wonderful idea Twigs had, thanks!
Maybe even 10's of thousands
of hand holding photographs.
I'm looking forward to its culmination ;o)
~ bikerjim
OK!
~ Fi
Bring it on! Looking forward to this one.
~ delphwynd
Ohhhh this is a beautiful idea!
count me in, i'm now looking for my first target/ erm friend hehe
~ wonderfullife
TOP NOTCH PLAN!!!
~ meancoast
That's great!! And I'll be holding a Burns supper that night so this will be extra fun.
~ samiam
I'm in.
Question: do I up load the images to my journal then? Am I able to have more than one pic a day? How do I "Tag" the image? Sorry I love photos but I am far from what you could call technical!
~ Eck
Eck - yes, just upload to your journal as normal. (Of course that means you're limited to just one picture per day, so choose wisely!)
To tag an entry, go to your journal settings page, check the 'Tags' option and click 'Save journal settings' at the bottom of the page.
Once you've done that, you'll see an extra box appear on step 2 of the new entry process, underneath the box where you enter your text. Just put 'bliptogether' in that box before you post your entry.
~ Joe
Does the hand holding blip count as our regular blip for that day?
~ jillybean
@jillybean - yes, it does.
~ Joe
love it and will join in... the guy in the pic's zip is down lol
~ audrey
@Joe ta very much!
~ Eck
Trust you to notice that, Audrey...
~ Joe
OK. Great ...
~ Lahdeaho
this is such an incredible idea! i am beyond excited for this. excellent!!
~ pocho
Great idea. Do you have a preference for plain (dark?) backgrounds (as shown here) or is anything OK?
~ andypowe11
Oh, and thanks for sorting out a weeks worth of blip ideas in one go - makes life much easier. Can you do this every week? ;-)
~ andypowe11
@andypowell - do what you like with the background. I think a bit of variety might make it all the more interesting!
~ Joe
Wonderful Idea!
I will do my best to find some happy people ;)
~ rianka
@Joe I'm wondering about contacting a gallery in the centre of Bath about displaying the images next Saturday. A week doesn't give much time! Doing so would be easier if we had access to some 'promotional' material about blipfoto - numbers of members, number of countries represented by the membership, etc. Is that kind of info available somewhere?
~ andypowe11
@andypowe11 - we didn't want to give you too much time to think about it!
We don't publish our numbers anywhere online, but if you want to drop us an email telling us what you have in mind, we'll try and give you a bit more background info.
~ Joe
This sounds like great fun now the exciting snow has melted here in the UK. Thanks Joe.
~ clickychick
cheers for this - has made my blip week quite straightforward! Does it have to be a different person everyday...or will anyone notice if I slip myself in a couple of times?!?!?
~ hebsjournal
Superb idea Joe, and Twigs ;-)
~ pixelsmiths
Every ten minutes I go to the search page and enter "tagged bliptogether" - it's so beautiful :)
Twigs, what splendid idea - thank you!
~ mly
Fantastic, I will be there.
~ Cora
Love it when a plan comes together!
~ jimwolffman
How fun, joining in!
~ nh
Make sure you hold your arms up and out...had to do it about 20 times till I got it right so that it could be square cropped and work with the hand joining!!!
~ hebsjournal
Clever people!
~ Northern
I'm so in!!! :)
~ HERE
Beautiful idea, I'm in!
~ nicola
Just had a quick scan of all the 'bliptogether' shots and it's already looking great. Just one thing it might be worth stressing more though is the square crop that's needed to make it work throughout; some of the longer 'landscape' styles shots aren't quite hitting the mark and arms are being chopped off. Not wanting to be a pedant here, but it really does look good when this isn't the case; so everybody, hold down the SHIFT key when you're cropping! :-)
~ delphwynd
Fun idea...I am in!!!
~ tnahlyn
I'm in!!!
~ Mike717
Also, to crop to a square, you need to make sure when you shoot that there is plenty of border left and right, so that you can crop down to the required square. It's not as easy as you think - experiment ;-)
~ pixelsmiths
och it's a truly new Scottish - media - Renaissance!!
Well done to all at blipfoto! I'm in !
~ bluestonefilm
It seems the part "make sure the hands are positioned half way down the picture" is a bit tricky too - it's real easy to end up with hands-positioned-1/3-up-from-the-bottom. If everyone really tries for hands at 1/2 of the height it's gonna look awesome!
~ mly
Half way seems REALLY tricky :(
I don't want to spoil anyones fun by going there and adding comments about that, but on the other hand, it would be sad to miss out on these shots....dilemma..
~ nh
Exxxxcellent guys.. I just posted my first one and did a search from that page.. there are only a few so far but heck.. they look AWESOME!!!! Wonderful idea and I am proud to be a part of it.. GOOOOOOO CHINA!!!!
~ ausmossie
Can girls do leg splits as long as they have their legs and feet at mid picture so they join their feet with the hands of other people? lol
~ yayforhappiness
Are all the guys supposed to have thir zippers down like the guy in the picture above? hehe Can girls who have zippers in the back stand backwards with their zippers down? ;)
~ yayforhappiness
Questions - I am becoming a tad obsessed with this now...
1. Does it have to be a person with their arms out...can inanimate person type things be included?
2. Can one person be blipped in a number of different hands out situations during the week if you're really stuck for getting hold of someone else? (i.e. when I am desperate at the end of the week can I blip myself again?!?!)
~ hebsjournal
Oooh it's getting good! Like how the 'bliptogether' pages (via search) all jumble themselves up each time you look at it. I've held hands with quite a few people already!
@ Hebs, I'm hoping to get people to do this for me but might have to resort to the good old s-p again if needs must!
~ Fi
Just a thought... some people seem to be struggling with the 'square crop' and 'hands half-way' parts of the instructions. FWIW, I suspect it is much easier to take the original photo in portrait mode, then crop the top and bottom off, than it is to shoot landscape and then try to crop the sides. Why? Because that gives you more space to play with to get the hands exactly half-way up/down the image.
Picnik, which is free to use, has quite a nice cropping feature, which forces square mode and which allows you to easily position the hands at exactly half-way.
~ andypowe11
As does the Blip image editor, which all members have access to!
~ Joe
@Joe - ah... good thinking! ;-)
~ andypowe11
genius
~ Anonymoose
Love it. ..
~ Pixelmeier
gosh, I just saw this, must start blipping!
~ RogersDay
Wonderful idea. I'll definitely take part. Not sure if all the sizes and positions are correct. Is there any way you can let us know if they are correct enough to be included.
~ Echo
Lovin it!
~ Happyframe
Ah! Thanks for enlightening me - (it's not easy taking self-portraits with your arms out whilst holding an iphone so I'm glad that I can go out and take photos of other people from now on!..) Good luck with everything!
~ kirstymcgee
Wondering why one of mine and a friends don't show up in the Bliptogether search when they did previously. Is there a link to the chain or just searching "bliptogether"? Thanks!
~ pddesigns
PD. The search box only shows a fixed number of images. They'll simply be superceeded by later additions.
~ G
I notice that there are quite a lot of blips that are obviously meant for this bliptogether thing but which are not square. Will these pictures be ignored by the bliptogether software? I guess some people will be very disappointed when they find out their pictures were excluded.
~ Snark
Snark - we're more concerned about the thumbnails fitting with the others. As long the thumbnail works OK, we'll include it.
~ Joe
~Chook mentioned getting a join-together song stuck in her head; now I've got THIS earworm stuck. Thanks! ;)
It's a good bliptogether themesong, though =^D
~ DaveH
This may be a stupid question, but.. Are the actual pics part of the software? or will I need to be online to view the pics?
~ ausmossie
aus - we'll be streaming from the website - so online.
~ G
Thanks G
~ ausmossie
I have a bit similar question than pddesigns above. Neither of my two Bliptogether pictures where shown in the search even right after the upload and even if other users' shots uploaded earlier were still there. Did I do something wrong? I have checked my tag spelling already several times...
~ katrikuu
After looking through all the bliptogether pics there are quite a few with more than one person. Is this O.K. as long as it's square and the hands are in the correct place? I have an idea you see.
~ Eck
kat - the search engine only shows a fixed number of images so you probably have fallen off which doesn't mean your not in the project just not visible in that search. We'll be checking other variations of the tags too - so it should be ok.
~ G
heh heh - audrey's comment made me laugh - of course, it made me return to look at his crotch and reminded me of this - the collectors' edition, mind, the one with the real zip.
and, ehh, blip image editor? - how does one access this gizmo?
rgds
LL (that's Lazy Luddite)CoolJim
~ LLCoolJim
You can't beat sticky fingers - it a membership feature Jim the gizmo not the other, so to speak.
~ G
ahh - riff-raff peasants can still use shitty microsoft scissors i s'pose ;o)
saturday is looking special - good luck - me n' jacob'll be watching keenly (we have to vacate our premises anyway at that time to make way for ladies who should know better intoxicating themselves at mum's cocktail-making party)
~ LLCoolJim
I'm so glad I found this site (thanks to Terryb and her link on getdpi)! It has changed my life! I celebrate today as I just became a full member. I can't wait for bliptogether to happen so I can be part of it. Next year, same time?
Thanks for ALL YOU do!
~ rwsphotography
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