A repository of beautiful photos and images | Hacker News Reader

A repository of beautiful photos and images

github.com

123 pointsgrantcarthew41 comments

Feels to me like GitHub is the wrong place to host photos, but well, I'm not the GitHub police.

This isn't just "hosting photos". It's the pictures plus some meta data (the CSV and readme files). I don't think it'd be a good idea to use raw.githubusercontent.com to access them but using Github to host the collection and meta data isn't that different to any other project that needs a ton of binary assets.

I had the same feeling when I made it. Didn't stop me though!

If for personal use and no redistribution, I love checking https://unsplash.com/

Their license is very permissive also for use in commercial settings.

(No affiliation.)

+1 for Unsplash. They've got a nice little Mac app [1] that updates your desktop with random shots, too.

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unsplash-wallpapers/id12848638...

Some great photos on there - I take it that some kind of AI processing is used at the top level to tag the pictures as it is mostly pretty good but I was surprised that this picture is described as "gray concrete bridge near mountain at daytime":

https://unsplash.com/photos/lhah6lFnims

NB The description on the picture itself is fine - its the top level description in the search results that is a bit odd

I may be wrong, but I think the photographer wrote that description - it's not unusual to see image descriptions like this on stock photography websites as it allows for more precise searches.

I'd be surprised if someone wrote "rule of thirds photography of gray concrete shed" for this one:

https://unsplash.com/photos/c_s23W8ZqFg

Thanks for the link. Bookmarking it.

Absolutely have your legal review unsplash license and ToS if you want to use an image of theirs in a project, I doubt they can provide meaningful defense for their "licensees" in case an author of a photo claims their work was put on unsplash without their permission and you ended up using and distributing it - this is basically the service that companies like Getty (however terrible) and Stock photo agencies provide and charge for besides the image itself.

Then there's the lack (last time I checked) of any sort of releases for all those images of people and even properties that are needed when making commercial use.

I prefer https://www.pexels.com/. Their search seems to find more relevant hits.

on a sample of 9 random images from the repository:

all nine looked like random point and click photos - soft focus, poor lighting, no composition - as if, in fact, you'd faced a landscape feature and taken a photo with no thought to how to present it.

I'm not going to click through all the images, but based on the sample I took it doesn't deserve the 'beautiful' adjective.

I'm no photographer @codeduck. I like them as wallpaper though.

I haven't added many from the "Wiki Loves Earth" competition yet. They might be better from your perspective.

I both agree and disagree. Most of these look straight out of the camera (unprocessed) but I didn't find them as bad as you say, they were mostly good SooC photos that just hadn't been processed. I didn't find many with soft focus.

Holy shit. This guy many moons ago taught me a Powershell advanced course in Brisbane (don't judge me).

Did not expect to see this here. Nor was I expecting to see myself already subscribed to his repo.

Edit: I have now noticed you posted it yourself, Grant :)

Hey @LilBytes. Still teaching. Still love tech.

What a great place to pitch the user script that adds inline file previews on the GitHub file listings: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/396357-repo-tree-inline-im...

amateur photos. Does the author really consider the photos stunning? I have explored all the England, Netherlands, Tibet and Switzerland photos, and perhaps ONE came close to what a basic Windows 10 lock screen has to offer...

I thought they looked great. Still adding to it.

How would one know which image is licensed under which license?

The csv file has the original URL and licenses.

No, it does not have the license.

The csv file has the URL to the original picture. Since most(all?) of them are from Wikipedia/Wikimedia commons each picture has its own page which includes metadata about the picture.

This does seem like a "tragedy of the commons" in the making if people start using Github as a photo sharing site, possibly in reaction to the demise of free photo sharing sites.

Readme: sed s/from the wed/from the web/

It is no "Show HN" so you might want to make a ticket. Even for typos it gets appreciated.

id like to file a bug report

Life finds a way [1].

[1] https://github.com/grantcarthew/data-stunning/issues/1

I only see about a 100 images. Not sure what's going on.

It's a side project. I just add photos when I get time. Not much at the moment.

Thanks. Great work!

Not sure how long this will last on github

I opened a few, they look like pretty ordinary landscape photos.

Hardly stunning or beautiful.

I like them :)

was expecting at least a couple of nudes. how disappointing.

Was hoping there _weren't_ any but didn't want to verify. Thanks!

Why rob creative people of making profit. Open source often cuts people out of profit under the promise of notoriety for imaginary future profits. Many people are not advanced graduates of elite colleges or independently wealthy. To create free repositories undermines talent that should be paid for and nourished. If you live in utopia this is great, for those who don’t it is another barrier to your dream.

They're all sourced from Wikipedia. The license needs to be pretty permissive for the photo to be included in Wikipedia in the first place.

This is the same argument used to oppose free trade and immigration.

On an economic level, it ignores all of the benefits of open source materials, claims that more expensive goods result in greater wealth, and doesn’t account for comparative advantage.

I'm sorry but that's crazy, firstly this repo has nothing to do with lisc. So if someone was going to pay for an image to use commercial this wouldn't effect them.

And open source is a social equalizer, it allows those who couldn't afford to license code a place to have access to and learn about coding, and development process.

Your argument basically sounds like we should close all public libraries because they rob the authors of books profits.

I would also argue that there are very few people that are being tricked into working on open source projects. Open source repos are worked on by people from all walks of life from people would went to the best colleges in the world, to people who didn't finish high school.

I love to know where you got these notitions from.

These images were given away by their creators. Are you saying they shouldn't be allowed to do that?

You have just submitted a comment that is an opinion piece. Professional writers make a living writing opinion columns, and they are struggling right now. Partly due to the prevlance of free opinions such as yours. You should stop submitting free opinions to web forums, so that the market for professional writing is maintained.

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