A couple of years back I had a couple of ideas which involved processing time-lapse images and realised that the easiest way to obtain set of images of a static location over time would be via public webcams, so I wrote a script that would grab images periodically from web cam feeds and let it run for a while, by a while I mean years and by periodically I mean every minute ! Over that time I messed about with a few things but never managed to get anything too interesting or more productive than a hard disk full of images.
Today everything exists to end in a photograph.
Susan Sontag
Late last year I had the notion to set set up a twitter feed for some these webcams, so I set up accounts for the camera on Denny Street Tralee and another for Inchydoney Beach West Cork and set them into action, they have being tweeting images hourly since then.
Recently I thought it might be interesting to make these accounts a bit more interactive, maybe turning them into a kind of twitter powered photo booths.
They will now send you a photo if you tweet them and say #cheese,
Here’s me testing the Inchydoney account…
… and the slightly less scenic camera on Denny Street Tralee.
If you are on Twitter you can follow the cams at @DennyStreetCam and @InchydoneyCam, if you want to suggest any other cams around that might be of interest I might add another few, or if you want to set up you own you can grab the source code here..
Finally just to mention I don’t operate or have anything to do with these camera, so thanks to Kerry County Council and Inchydoney Hotel respective for making these cameras publicly available.