The Flux: Creating a Large Annotated Image Database

From image retrieval to image classification, all research shares one common requirement: a good image database to test or train the algorithms. In order to create a large database of images, we set up a project that allowed gathering a collection of more than 33000 photographs with keywords and tags from all over the world. This project was part of the “We Are All Photographers Now!” exhibition at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland. The “Flux,” as it was called, gave all photographers, professional or amateur, the opportunity to have their images shown in the museum. Anyone could upload pictures on a website. We required that some simple tags were filled in. Keywords were optional. The information was collected in a MySQL database along with the original photos. The pictures were projected at the museum in five second intervals. A webcam snapshot was taken and sent back to the photographers via email to show how and when their image was displayed at the museum. During the 14 weeks of the exhibition, we collected more than 33000 JPEG pictures with tags and keywords. These pictures come from 133 countries and were taken by 9042 different photographers. This database can be used for non-commercial research at EPFL. We present some preliminary analysis here.