The Gallery. It conjures up images of refined art hanging in well designed often stunning architectural environments that perpetuate a sense of serenity and well being, while free champagne flows as the latest darling of the press prepares to dazzle all-comers with his masterful new take on expressionism. Well forget all that. While you can certainly expect the finer things as far as modern soul goes, that's about all Soul Essence has in common with a Gallery. Prepare to laugh, cry, and blow chunks as you stare in amazement at Soul Essence and its punters in all their glory.

So this year, to save my sanity, my inbox, my bandwidth, and the web storage limit, I thought I'd take a different approach to the gallery, and rather than re-creating the wheel, I thought why not use what's already out there, the darling of Web2.0, www.Flickr.com.

To find the Soul Essence 26 photos on Flickr, go to the Flickr website and simply type "soulessence26" (make sure it's all one word) into the search box. I'm sure there are many more photo's taken at Essence than ever get sent to me, so I'm hoping that by doing things this way, more people might feel inclined to upload and share.

So, what to do if you want to upload and share your pictures? Well you'll need a Yahoo account since Flickr is owned by Yahoo. Once you've registered, or if you already have a Yahoo account, just log into Flickr and follow the instructions. The important part is this - make sure your photos are public, AND make sure you tag them with "soulessence" (one word, no quotes), AND "soulessence26" (again one word, no spaces, no quotes, and change 26 to whatever Essence number it is). And that's it. The world can see your photos!

I've included a link to this years photos at the top and bottom of the page along with the other galleries. Enjoy.