Earlier this year, the Library of Congress uploaded over 3,000 historic photographs to the Flickr photo-sharing site as part of a metadata-enhancing experiment. Within 24 hours, thousands of Flickr users had tagged the photos with descriptive keywords and helped make the photo collection more accessible. You can find some fascinating photos of old New York in their photostream, including the idyllic scene above of some horseback riders trotting through Central Park circa 1912.

Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park along with the architect Calvert Vaux, filled the area with picturesque backdrops like this one that continue to attract photographers in droves. Our Photographing Olmsted class, one of many art classes now available, invites you to make Olmsted’s signature public park your personal studio this summer. We invite you to upload the results to Flickr and tag them “92Y” so we can blog them.

[Photographing Olmsted]