Hi all, this thread title brings together several of my interests - UK folk and "electric folk" music (Fairports, Steeleye Span, Albions etc. - Asheley Hutchings being a common denominator); going to live music gigs, esepcially in the UK, 1970s-80s; "publicly sharing" my otherwise personal collection of photos of musicians on stage and elsewhere; and contributing to articles on Wikipedia.

In short: as detailed elsewhere on Mudcat, for the past 10 years or so I have been going through my photo albums and uploading the ones I am most pleased with, and consider to have some value that is not unique just to me and the persons in them, to Wikimedia Commons as a more permanent and publicly accessible "image repository" that will hopefully outlast me and my other possessions that will either be dispersed or go to the tip on my demise (happy thoughts here).

One advantage of this method of "archive outsourcing" is that, so long as an appropriate public and royalty-free license is selected on image upload, the images then become available for use to illustrate Wikipedia articles, most notably on the subjects depicted in the photos (performers in question) but occasionally for other uses as well (illustrate what happens at a festival, or for a particular musical style, for example).

Now on Wikimedia Commons, performers of all genres from the last couple of decades (coinciding with the massive uptake of smartphones and their capabilities) are generally well represented by audience photos; those from decades past, frequently patchy or not at all. As an example, the Albion Band (Wikipedia article here) have had countless incarnations, album and other releases, loads of band members in past and current lineups, but are represented on Wikimedia Commons by precisely 3 images from the Cathy Lesurf era, all taken by myself one day in 1982, of which I have uploaded 2 to the Wikipedia article. Surely there must be more around, in peoples drawers or shoeboxes, that could supplement this?

I write this first as a prod to see if it results in any more / new / interesting / appealing photos of the Albions (preferably from other incarnations) being uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, but also as a more general suggestion that it would be great for the public to be able to see and potentially, reproduce other photos of musical interest that must surely be around in the collections of amateurs like me, gathering dust and mildew otherwise on their way to the great scrap heap in the sky (or more prosaically, probably landfill...)

Regards - Tony Rees, Australia