Hi,

I have mentioned to Bishaka, Vivek and Pradeep in person and on the Mumbai list. After our first Mumbai Photowalk, I ran a quick check on Flickr for Mumbai related content and found a lot of relevant and professional photographs. I contacted relevant uploaders requesting them to change licensing to CC-BY or CC-BY-SA so that to allow use on Wikipedia.

A lot of them agreed - for example, I got pictures of an IPL match at Brabourne Stadium, several photographs of Ganpati Visarjan at Girgaum Chowpatty (taken from a boat by a visiting foreigner who kindly agreed to change licensing) - they include wonderful picutures of the beach full of people and idols, coast guard choppers patrolling etc., Ballard Bunder Gatehouse, an ATP tournament that took place in Mumbai at CCI in 2006, Agatti and Delhi airports (aerial view) and Mani Bhavan pictures so far. During the photowalks we would have taken a lot of time to cover so much - and may not have been as professional.

Further past sports events is something we could not have got for obvious reasons and I doubt we could have got as good pictures of Ganesh Visarjan (even if we waited a few more months ourselves). Out of about 15 people contacted about 7 people have agreed to change the licensing (only 1 refusal thus far). A lot of the amateur photographers on Flickr might be willing to let go of the copyright so as to get more exposure and notice through Wikipedia (they may even pass the word that their photographs have been requested for use by Wikipedians and are currently used on Wikipedia!). A couple of them while changing the license requested me for the link to the article on which their photo is used. It may be a good idea for us to concentrate on getting pictures from Flickr rather than conducting more photowalks (by identifying requisite photographs and requesting them via comments on the said photo and email to the photographer/flickr user).

Regards,
User:AroundTheGlobe