Thing #6: the ubiquitous remix

The first thing to realise when you delve into the world of Flickr mashups is this: you're going to need some pictures. You can't mash nothing with anything; the nothing noths.

Now, I don't have any pictures that I want to put on Flickr right now, and I wasn't about to go down the path of infringing on someone else's intellectual property, so I have nothing to show for this Thing. I'll tell you what I did do.

I chose an image (borrowed from someone else) so I could get cranking on the Movie Poster app at Big Huge Labs. Actually, it was a picture of me, a real rock and roll live moment. Lots of black, some light flares in the background, and me looking thoughtfully into the dark, guitar in hand.

Composition-wise this photo was all on the left-hand side, and all in landscape. BHL's Movie Poster didn't cope with this very well, and I gave up trying to centre the picture right.

I think apps like this are quite cool, though I think the more practical mashups like Mappr would be of more interest to me. If I wanted to make a movie poster I wouldn't think to do it with a web app. For those who aren't at all familiar with using graphics and publishing software, then these apps are really cool. For those of us who have made these kind of images as a job, well, we need time off, you know.