Mela Eckenfels

Preparation for tonights dinner. Tuna, marinated in lime juice, soy sauce, pearl onions, red pepper, pepper and ground lime skin. Tuna will be grilled and served with salad.

Also, this pic is my last goodbye from flickr. I want to thank you, especially my contacts and the active groups here. You where fun and inspiration to me. But now, new forces hold people from access to flickr-content.

This alone is worse, especially for a paid service. Even worse is the denial of information and communication from flickr-staff and yahoo-officials. They tried to keep the changes under the carpet, failed and now they trying to sit this out, while gagging complaining members.

About censorship:

Photography isn't always art. Sometimes it is just documentation (like my food pics). Who wants to decide where art ends, and where documentation ends?
Who wants to say that showing as food slaughtered dogs (what is very shocking to most europeans and americans) isn't allowed? Who wants to decide that documenting theft of your art isn't allowed?

Who wants to decide which facts photographers document all over the world may be seen by others? Riots? Political demonstrations? putsches? Every pic can be shocking to one or another member. The rating system would be a great tool to prevent lightly touched and shocked people from seeing things they could not deal with. But to force this system to 'safe' on a whole country? Today germany, singapure, hong kong and korea ... tomorrow..?

And that is the problem. Your can't stop the censorship train once it is rolling. Flickr already has gone too far in this subject. Not only censoring pics but also censor comments.. and even more criticism on flickrs actions. There is no alternative for me then to stop actively using this service.. and leave this great community.

I'm sorry. See you (maybe) on http://www.23hq.com/Mela/