Sharing East Asia pictures and video in 2026
G P Witteveen
What a good start to 2026: the photo sharing site Flickr has granted the Society for East Asia Anthropology (SEAA) their free PRO account, thanks to its 501c3 non-profit status. So from now to December 2030 the PRO account allows unlimited uploading, including video of 10 minutes or shorter. SEAA members and friends outside of AAA are invited to contribute** 1 or more pictures or video from work or play to expand the visual pool of East Asia materials and commentary that the public can see at https://flickr.com/photos/seaa-americananthro
Examples of snapshots and video clips (under 10 minutes apiece) to contribute.
Project-based new album to establish at the SEAA Flickr account
Existing album for public browsing, “East Asian on Display”
Existing album for public browsing, “Cultural Productions outside of East Asia” (e.g. Japanese-style gardens, ethnic festivals, food cultures, advertising)
<> Images/video from your own projects/fieldwork.
<> *Images/video by others while doing your project/fieldwork.
<> Panoramas (big scenes, interiors, up-close exhibits)
<> Soundscapes (daily life, special event, performing artist live or in rehearsal)
<> Collage of 2 or 4 shots arranged into a frame and captured as a screenshot for uploading as 1 image file
<> Compare/contrast (side by side in color or b/w)
<> Archived or historical subjects, including digitized selections of film or slide-film materials
<> Language-centric pictures (signs, publications, posters spotted, excerpted texts ancient or modern)
<> Written notations other than ordinary language (musical scores, other record-keeping markings)
<> Ephemera - bulletin boards, street scenes/events,
<> Beautiful sights - less about cultural context but instead an emotional (visual) response to nice view
*Potentially we could have a corresponding wishlist of images or contexts to share: you would request a particular subject and then one of your colleagues in the vicinity or with a collection already at hand can respond by contributing content or link to that content hosted elsewhere.
**Contributions include copyright options you wish to reserve: "all rights reserved," Creative Commons (variations to attribute creator, yes/no commercial use, yes/no modification allowed), or Public Domain.
Email contributions as attachments (or Zip Folder set) can be send to seaa.americananthro+flickr [at]gmail.com (specify the copyright setting you want; default is set to 'all rights reserved')
In the case of video, anything large (e.g. over 25mb) would have to be transferred with a temporary holding (cloud) service, such as the free accounts at WeTransfer. In the interest of minimizing the data burden for storing and displaying, JPG files need not be the original, full-size image (unless detail and viewers require it to read closely) but instead can be as small as 1280 x 720. Likewise for video, rather than Full HD (1920x1080), in most cases basic HD (1280x720) is large enough for good playback.
If you wish to share a group of pictures on a specific subject/theme/locale, SEAA can probably make a new album dedicated to that. The PRO membership does not have a limit on the number of albums to create, number of uploads, and also allows the longer time limit of 10 minutes per video (rather than the free Flickr account cap at 3 minutes).
Colleagues wishing to share visual material, but who prefer NOT to display under the SEAA Flickr account, can make their own free account (maximum 1000 files) and then communicate the URL and description to the email address above. That way more and more such visual material can all be inventoried on a separate webpage that the public can browse.
Send any questions or comments to SEAA web manager, Guven Witteveen, at seaa.americananthro+flickr [at]gmail.com