{"id":33,"date":"2007-12-03T21:13:12","date_gmt":"2007-12-04T01:13:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/2007\/12\/new-feature-photos-of-bible-places\/"},"modified":"2016-02-06T11:10:31","modified_gmt":"2016-02-06T15:10:31","slug":"new-feature-photos-of-bible-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/2007\/12\/new-feature-photos-of-bible-places\/","title":{"rendered":"New Feature: Photos of Bible Places"},"content":{"rendered":"

Browse 9,500 photos taken near 580 biblical locations<\/a>. For example: Beersheba<\/a>, Capernaum<\/a>, and Ur<\/a>.<\/p>\n

More examples:<\/p>\n

\"See<\/a>
Aqueduct at Caesarea<\/a> by hoyasmeg<\/p>\n

\"See<\/a>
Gates at Dan<\/a> by callmetim<\/p>\n

\"See<\/a>
Rooftops at Babylon<\/a> by labanex<\/p>\n

Background<\/h3>\n

Photo-sharing site Flickr<\/a> has an API<\/a> that lets you find photographs by latitude and longitude. The Bible Geocoding<\/a> section of this site has lots of data arranged by latitude and longitude. Why not use the Flickr API to find photos that people have taken near places in the Bible?<\/p>\n

The resulting photos<\/a> are of varying quality for getting an idea of what a place looks like. Remember, people didn\u2019t necessarily take these photos with the intent of giving you an overview of the landscape. The photos reflect personal interests\u2014maybe someone saw an interesting flower that just happens to be near a biblical landmark. So don\u2019t expect every photo to be relevant or every place to have lots of photos.<\/p>\n

Technical Notes<\/h3>\n

Every night, a program on this server queries the Flickr API to find any new photos taken near the biblical locations. Then it saves these photos to a database, indexed by location for easy retrieval.<\/p>\n

The program treats copyrighted and Creative-Commons-licensed photos the same way\u2014 thumbnails are OK for copyrighted photos<\/a>. In the future, I may feature CC-licensed photos more prominently. Only about 2,000 of the 9,500 photos are CC-licensed.<\/p>\n

Future Directions<\/h3>\n

Right now, you can only get to the photos by browsing them by place. I hope to integrate the photos into the Bible atlas<\/a> somehow.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d also like to let people vote on helpful or unhelpful photos to better prioritize the photos.<\/p>\n

It may be possible to use Flickr tags to find non-geocoded photos of Bible places, but I\u2019m not sure how to perform such a task automatically. I\u2019m certainly open to suggestions.<\/p>\n

What You Can Do with the Photos<\/h3>\n

I don\u2019t own the photos; the photographers do. If you want to use a photo for something, click on it to go to its Flickr page. Then check its licensing terms. If it\u2019s copyrighted, you need to secure permission from the photographer before you use it. If it has a Creative Commons license, you have more freedom to use the photos, depending on the terms of the license.<\/p>\n

I recommend Todd Bolen\u2019s BiblePlaces.com<\/a> for professional-quality, affordable photos of places in the Holy Land, especially Israel. His photos give you lots of perspectives and work especially well for presentations. Compare Todd\u2019s photos of Engedi<\/a> to OpenBible\u2019s photos of Engedi<\/a>, for example, to see how his photos help connect you to the biblical narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Browse 9,500 photos taken near 580 biblical locations. For example: Beersheba, Capernaum, and Ur. More examples: Aqueduct at Caesarea by hoyasmeg Gates at Dan by callmetim Rooftops at Babylon by labanex Background Photo-sharing site Flickr has an API that lets you find photographs by latitude and longitude. The Bible Geocoding section of this site has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1192,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/1192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.openbible.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}