Well, probably a few things—bad vacation photographs and the long-winded stories that usually accompany them, to name a few. However, since we have a huge pool of photos available to us as raw material, we are finding them more delightful, especially when they include the Smithsonian collections and prompt us to look at the photography collections in a new light.

Flickr has a not-so-new feature called Galleries which lets people group images across Flickr in ways that make sense to them. As a member of the Commons, we thoroughly enjoy ego-surfing these galleries.

Some are just fun to look at, like Beards across the Commons and Hats across the Commons . Some are seasonal, like Snow in the Archives - Brrrr! Some clearly are made to inspire future projects, like stories II and aquarium. Some may be for school projects, like Inventors and American Foodways. Some are revealing, like How Flickr Distracts Me from Real Work.

When I saw Flickr user, Adreinne Waheed, assembling gorgeous groups of photos related to African and African-American History, I wanted to know more. It turns out Adreinne is a photographer, editor, and researcher, spending the last decade photo editing at magazines. She also used to be local to Washington, D.C., an alumnus of Howard University.  She spends time on the Commons looking for photos to research future projects.

We hope to learn more about how Adreinne uses the Commons and want to hear from you about how you use Smithsonian’s photo collections. In the meantime, enjoy the show!