As many who read this site know well, Market Street Railway is a member supported non-profit organization and the streetcar and cable car preservation partner of the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni). We receive no government funding and depend on membership dues, donations, and proceeds from sales of our merchandise to support our preservation and transit advocacy.
Our annual Museums in Motion streetcar and cable car calendar is a very important part of our fundraising and we would like your help putting together our next calendar, because 2012 is a special year.
A century of Muni
In 1912 the San Francisco Municipal Railway opened it’s first streetcar line on Geary Street and became the world’s first public transit system in a major city. Three years earlier voters had decided they were going to rebuild San Francisco better than it was before, by publicly funding a transit service that would better serve the people.
It would become the dominant model around the world as private transit operators declined.
In 2012 we plan to tell the story of "The People’s Railway" in our Museums in Motion streetcar and cable car calendar. Help us by sharing your photos from the first century of Muni in our flickr group.
Submit your photos
We’re particularly looking for high-quality photos of currently running F-line streetcars and cable cars for the feature photo, which all but fills an 11″ x 16″ page each month, a great format for showing off your shots. The main picture will be paired with historic black and white photos on the facing (calendar grid) page, relating to the same theme, location, or time period. We’re looking for more unconventional perspectives, framing and composition. Over the last few years we’ve been getting away from 3/4 shots and the feedback has been that these are some of the most interesting photos. Here is what some of the 11″x 16″ main page photos in our 2011 calendar looked like:
We also will not be limiting it to vehicles painted in Muni colors because liveries of other cities have been part of the fleet, and part of the fabric of San Francisco, for over a quarter of a century. We are limiting our feature photos to only streetcars and cable cars though, not modern light rail vehicles or buses.
To submit a photo all you need to do is post it on flickr (a free photo sharing site) and tag it msrcalendarsubmission.
There’s no limit to how many photos you may submit by tagging msrcalendarsubmission, but please help us out by selecting what you think are your best and not simply tagging every photo.
Photos should be landscape (horizontally) oriented, in color, and at least 3,000 x 2,000 pixels. We know many of you don’t post high-resolution versions to Flickr, but any photos submitted for publication should be available as camera original JPEG or RAW files without watermarks.
Photographers are always fully credited with email address or website published in the calendar and are given five calendars as a thank you. Please leave a comment if you have questions or suggestions for our next calendar.
