Yahoo/Flickr had a great idea for the the Toronto Santa Claus Parade. They would have two gals, Yahoo employees, ride bicycles with specially mounted cameras on the front steering wheel of the bikes. Then automatically, once a minute a picture would be snapped of the parade as “observed” by the bike riders/picture takers and automatically transmitted to the Flickr website. I may have See below for portrait of Purple-Shutter in action taken by her colleague, Swerple (see Swerples images of the parade here):
The Yahoo Picture-taking Bike
But the best laid plans of Mice and Men Oft Go Agley ….
First check out the Santa Parade pictures taken by by Purple-Shutter.
Then those Santa Parade pictures taken by Swerple
If you are like me, you might say the results were mixed.
What Yahoo needs to do is make the following changes:
1)change the mount of the camera so the riders/picture takers can move the camera forward and back;
2)have a small bright TFT-LCD that show the rider/picture-takers what the camera sees;
3)allow the riders/picture-takers to squeeze a button to take an image.
I am so intrigued by this I am going to see if I can modify my bike to accomplish the above goals with my Nikon or Canon handhelds. If readers know of camera mounts on a bicycle that can already do this – please add a comment or send ye fateful editor a note here.