Getty Images has announced that its Flickr Collection has grown to 500,000 images. The half millionth photograph had been submitted by Jiangang Wang, a system engineer and photo hobbyist from Tianjin, China. The image, “Minato Mirai night view,” was captured from the vantage point of Osan-bashi in Yokohama, Japan, where Wang now lives, and shows the city skyline just after sunset.

Getty Press Release

Celebrating the 500,000th Flickr collection image, and the originality of photography enthusiasts everywhere

By Sarah Lochting, Getty Images

With this stunning contribution from Jiangang Wang, a system engineer and photo hobbyist from Tianjin, China, our Flickr collection has grown to 500,000 images. Wang’s shot, featuring the curved light trail of a ship, is but one example among hundreds of thousands of compelling contributions from the Flickr community of photography enthusiasts spanning more than 115 countries.

The image, “Minato Mirai night view,” was captured from the vantage point of Osan-bashi in Yokohama, Japan, where Wang now lives, and shows the city skyline just after sunset.

“When I saw a ship passing by, an idea flashed into my mind,” says Wang. “I wanted to capture the landscape with the ship’s light trails. To my surprise, the ship made a turn resulting in a nice, curved trail. This is rare, as ship trails are usually straight.”

We’re glad he got the shot.

Wang’s image is now among the half a million Flickr collection images available for licensing exclusively on gettyimages.com, the go-to collection for content that embodies the regional authenticity so many visual communicators are looking for.

How have we amassed such a robust collection of local photos?  For starters, Flickr is one of the world’s largest photo sharing communities on the web.

Getty Images’ photo editors and Flickr’s community of global photographers work together with contributors on a daily basis to ensure that what is needed at a local level is reflected in the Flickr collection imagery.

As a result, Getty Images has been able to expand upon the depth of the Flickr collection and also ensure the collection has an abundance of high-quality content from regions around the world.

“We believe that the strength of the Flickr collection lies with the connection the photographers feel for their subject matter. The fact that many of the images are created with no commercial end use in mind lends them an unexpected originality and freshness that audiences can easily identify with,” said Andy Saunders, Getty Images’ SVP Creative Imagery and Product Development.  “The 500,000th image milestone shows how engaged our Flickr contributors are, and their content demonstrates originality, humour and relevance.”

The Flickr collection features imagery from the highly conceptual, to everyday scenes of believable and regionally relevant content, with thousands of new images added each month to meet the evolving needs of Getty Images’ customers.

For more information and to view Getty Images’ Flickr collection, please visit: www.gettyimages.com/flickr. ­

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