Today is the day! On this very auspicious February 29th we’d like to invite you to celebrate the community-wide FlickrJump2012 with us.

Grab your camera, place it on a tripod or a suitable surface, prepare the timer or grab your remote. Ready? Now jump! And upload your photo with the tag FlickrLeap2012; you can use the hashtag #FlickrLeap2012 on Twitter, too.

To get some inspiration, you can follow along the photos others have already uploaded today. Once you are ready, set your camera and shoot!

We will feature some of your photos later today here on FlickrBlog.

Photos from michy66, Daniel Karamoy, nofiandi and Ksatria Web.

Back in January, we announced some pretty big changes were going to happen this year. We’re hard at work to make your Flickr experience fresher, more gorgeous and super intuitive to use. It’s our goal to make the interface as streamlined as possible, so you can enjoy sharing your wonderful photography and exploring all of the awesome stories here on Flickr.

Justified View

Today, we’re excited to introduce a new look for the Photos from your Contacts page, called the Justified layout. We created this new view to make it easier to see the stories your friends are telling with their photos. While the previous layout choices are still available, the new design optimizes for seamlessly displaying more images at larger sizes, so you can see more of the activity from contacts, friends and family at once.

Psst. Panoroma photos look particularly stunning in the new layout.

Needless to say, our Justified layout always respects the aspect ratio of the original image and will never crop your photos. We’ve also added quick access to comment on and fave directly on photos in this view, so it’s easier than ever to interact and engage with your friends.

We’ll be rolling out Justified view to all of our members over the next few days, so if you don’t see it right away, be sure to check your contacts page later this week.

Coming up!

The new Justified view will appear as a view option on other Flickr pages soon and is just the first of many changes we’re working on. A lot of improvements on core parts of the site are already in the pipeline and will be available over the course of the year. We hope you will keep telling us what you think as you start to see the new Flickr and letting us know what you enjoy and what we can do better.

We have created help forum threads for bugs you encounter and general feedback on the Justified layout and are looking forward to hearing from you.

We all love Flickr for its ability to bring us all together. To allow us to share our photography, our passion, and our stories with others. And then somtimes the unexpected happens and we are asked if someone can publish our work. Time passes and then that truly magical moment happens when we see our work for the first time printed, brought to life with professional inks on paper.

All of the above photos tell such a wonderful story. They invite us to discover even more photos of works from within the Flickrverse that have been published during the last year.

Photos from kvdl, [~Bryan~], SemperNovus, www.LKGPhoto.com, sea turtle, siskokid, and Wizum.

Photos from unsharpmask, labcreature, and sabley

This weekend, February 25 and 26, our very own Jamal will be at Photo Hack Day 2 in New York to give a presentation on the Flickr API and to answer any questions you may have while hacking.

What’s in it for me? First and foremost, a lot of fun, hanging out with fellow hackers. There will be awesome APIs and developers, food and drink aplenty, and cool evening activities. Oh, and did we mention that the winners of Photo Hack Day can get up to $5,000 in cash? Or that the best use of the Flickr API will get a $100 gift code for the Photojojo store? And iIf this is still not enough, every participant (yes, even if your app doesn’t make it into the top Photo Hack Day apps) will get one year of Flickr Pro with all its benefits. Yay!

What’s an API, you ask? It’s a system that third parties can use to programmatically access Flickr. When iPhoto sends your photos to the site? That’s using our API.

Here are some awesome examples of people using our API:

commonsExplorer:
A Java application from the University of Canberra that pulls in information about the Commons collection via the API and builds a text cloud from the titles of photos, which lets you click on related words to show matching images.

Flickr Poet:
Turns lyrics or a poem into a photographic display based off the words, using images from Flickr.

Stuck on Earth, a fantastic mapping app we recently introduced to you here on the blog.

If you’re interested in playing, check out our Developer Guide and the complete list of our api methods to get started. Enjoy!

Photo from blech.

Photos from Edwin_Abedi, 1982Chris911 (Thank you 100.000 Times), andrew c mace, vulture labs, and chewie2008~.

3:15 pm PST: Hey everyone, the massage was a success and we’re slowly coming back. Thanks a lot for your patience!

2:45 pm PST: Looks already better, but word is the massage session might still take a smidgen longer. We appreciate your patience.

2:14 pm PST: Our chiropractors have found the spot and are applying gentle pressure right now. If all goes well, we should be back shortly.

2:06 pm PST: The servers are still not comfortable, but we’re getting closer to finding the source of the lumbago. We’ll keep you updated right here, as soon as we know more.

1:43 pm PST: We’re having a small hardware hiccup and some servers need to get a gentle massage by our knowledgeable engineers. Apologies for the disruption, we’ll keep you posted in this space and it will hopefully not take long. Thanks for your patience.

February 29^th next week is Leap Day, and we want to celebrate this once in a lifetime once every four year occasion with a big JUMP!

You heard right, whether you do it with your best friends, your co-workers and boss, your mom and uncle Bob, or do it alone is totally up to you.

Stay tuned and be ready to take part in the Flickr-wide FlickrLeap2012 once it’s February 29^th where you are.

Photos from laurenlemon, Olivia Bell, Éole, J-Chan, born, francesbean, Evil Erin.

You organized two amazing afternoons last weekend and we want to share some of the impressions from those two FlickrMeets in New York and Philadelphia. It was a lot of fun hanging out with you, chatting and taking photos. We are super happy you could make it, and are already looking forward to the next FlickrMeets taking place over the upcoming weeks in London, Karachi, Stockholm, Dresden, Oxford, Indianapolis, Madrid, or at a place just around your corner. Go create a meet up!

Photos from kaitlin.marie, soupatraveler, kdrake1007, Shirin N, Joe Shlabotnik, Apotheoun, and RobertFrancis, uploaded to the #phillyflickrmeetup and #nycflickrmeetup groups.

The art project "Das gebaute Bild" (The Constructed Picture), created by Flickr member linus_lohoff, was part of a photography class project at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences where Linus studies graphics design.

"I’ve been a big fan of Erwin Wurm who transformed everyday objects into art."

It was the shift in context that fascinated Linus about this project. After some research he started having ideas of floating and disappearing everyday objects, like the banana that appears to be sinking into the ground or the shoe that has been nailed to the floor to not fly away.

"Everything is photographed and set up the way you see it."

Linus says he needed to use nylon thread to affix some of the objects which he digitally removed later-on, but apart from that, everything is photographed and set up the way you see it. "Since I wanted strong contrasts, I chose backgrounds with different colors. Everything was placed on a small table and then shot with a Nikon D80 and a flash."

"Minimum effort – maximum effect."

Linus chose his personal motto not because he’s lazy but because small changes can produce the largest effects that surprise over and over again. He also likes to try out many different things and finds it most important to always keep experimenting: "My photostream showcases many portraits, night scenes, landscapes, objects, and photograms. I also avoid being limited by technical conditions: Apart from digital cameras, I also use a variety of Polaroid , medium format, or 35 mm cameras." Linus tells us that he always learns best through experience and the process of creating his art.

Photos from linus_lohoff.