The world, being photographed. Each spark is a photo just uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, placed where it was taken.
connecting…
Only photos with a location appear — click any spark to see the picture.
Somewhere on Earth, someone just shared a photograph with the world. Each spark on this globe is a photo freshly uploaded to Wikimedia Commons — the free media library behind Wikipedia — drawn where the photo was taken. Click a spark to see the picture.
The page listens to the public Wikimedia EventStreams feed. When a new photo arrives with a location — usually from the camera's own GPS — it appears here within seconds of the upload. Nothing is staged: every picture is genuinely new, shared freely by a volunteer moments ago.
Each spark is a photo that was just uploaded to Wikimedia Commons — the free media library behind Wikipedia — shown on the globe where the photo was taken. Click any spark to see the picture itself, moments after a volunteer shared it with the world.
Only photos that carry a location — usually recorded by the camera's own GPS — can be placed on the globe, which is roughly one upload in ten. There is also a short delay while Commons indexes a fresh photo's location, so each picture appears a couple of minutes after its upload.
The page is free, has no sign-up, and is open source. The photos themselves are freely licensed by their authors on Wikimedia Commons — follow any spark to its file page for the exact license and author credit.
Part of The Planet Thinks — watch Wikipedia being edited live on the same globe, see live edit statistics, or how big Wikipedia is. Free, open source, no sign-up. Globe imagery: NASA Blue Marble / Black Marble.