Online and mobile amateur photography initiatives started by Channel 4 are clicking with budding creatives. A web community for Picture This, a Flickr-backed TV talent contest for wannabe pro snappers, has seen over 3,600 viewer contributions since launching in early December.  The operation uses the Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO) photo site’s underlying infrastructure as a picture host via API hooks crafted by developer Preloaded. Channel 4’s factual new media commissioner Adam Gee said 4.7 percent of site visits are longer than an hour.

Meanwhile, the Big Art Mob site has notched up around 500 users, three months before its corresponding TV show goes on-air. The Big Art Project, which will explore public artworks, transmits on C4 in April but the website has been gathering mobile images for the show since May and has attracted “a couple of thousand” mobile public art snaps so far. The initiative is run with moblogging platform moblogUK, which will incorporate customisations developed for C4 in to is own portal through March.