Record Breaking Photo Mosaic

The Guinness book of records confirms that at over 100,000 photos, this is (as of August 2008) the current largest photo mosaic in the world, created by folks in the Midlands. A blog post from the project confirms: “An adjudicator from Guinness World Records has verified the artwork and it’s official, we’re all World Record holders. The record-breaking work of art included 112, 896 photos, and measured 900m2. It was unveiled outside Thinktank at Millennium Point.”

It was amazing to be part of this project, initially accosted to take part in this in a Coffee Shop at the back of New Street Station to test the website, along with other Birmingham flickr users, I found myself submitting image after image to the website. At times even taking photos specifically for the project. A clever way of tagging photos already on flickr allowed them to be sent to the project with ease. Overwhelmed by the response from folks who simply had a camera and took photos of their pets at home, the final result was too big to actually be hung up and was laid out on a huge platform at Millennium Point. I was chuffed myself to see one of my photos along with a photo from a fellow Walsall flickr group member projected on a slideshow at the opening reception ahead of the unveiling.

This project shows how powerful social media can be in working together to create something that wouldn’t have been really feasible otherwise in the time given. The actual photo chosen to form the mosaic was 17 year old Lucy Moore’s photo of her Granddad in his boxing days in 1926. At the unveiling the emotion that she had invested in this became clear and everyone was so chuffed because the photo meant a lot to her family and all our tiny photos had been put together to recreate this image.

• The Big Picture Website
• Video Courtesy of Nick Booth

Posted on Saturday, August 23rd, 2008