The other day my office buddy Mindy showed me a fascinating website that taps the vast photographic resources of flickr.com, the photo sharing and management site. Called taggalaxy.com, it actually looks  more like a solar system.

When you type “Black Hills” into the tagline, it splits into something that looks like the Sun surrounded by planets with names such as “Wildlife” or “Custer State Park.” Click on a planet, and your search narrows. But if you click on the “Black Hills” (the Sun), the site conjures up a giant planetary sphere – then plasters it with Black Hills photos.

You can turn it, tilt it or click on one of the Australia-sized photos for a closer look.

In all, the Black Hills tag produced 23,676 photos – all apparently posted by flickr.com users who have visited the Black Hills — and are willing to show their images with the rest of the planet. There’s an amazing variety of photos, both in terms of quality and imagery.
The photos are displayed in spheres of about 235 images each. I guess there would be about 100 spheres of Black Hills photos.  I didn’t get through them all. The galaxy (at least the tag galaxy) is infinite, but time (at least mine) is not.