Tips for Taking Photos During the City Nature Challenge
The photos you take during the City Nature Challenge are there to provide evidence of the organism you saw, and to help confirm the identification of that organism. Therefore, taking good photos is key to participating in the CNC!
Here are some tips to taking photos:
- Focus on one species in each observation: While a field full of wildflowers is beautiful, it’s not the best photo for an observation - which of the many species is your species? Make sure that at least one of your photos for the observation (preferably the first) is a close up, centered in the frame, and fills the frame.
- Take several photos in one observation: photograph different parts or angles of your organism. For example, one photograph of an entire tree taken from far away won’t be very useful for identification. But that same shot combined with other photos that show close ups of the leaves, the bark, flowers or fruits, will allow the tree to be identified.
- Discard blurry photographs: Use the option on the app to retake photos if the photo is not good. Try retaking with a flash, or wait for the organism to stand still.
- Get close: For small organisms in particular, like ants or aphids, getting a nice close-up shot is vital for identification. A huge picture with a small black dot is useless. It can be difficult to get a good close-up shot with your smartphone, but zoom in and get close. If you enjoy photographing small things there are inexpensive clip-on macro lenses that take great, focused pictures of small organisms or close-ups of features of other organisms, like a plant that has tiny flowers or the eyes of a spider.
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An ideal observation has a picture showing the full organism, closeups of important features (for spiders this might be the arrangement of the eyes, the hairs and claws on the toes, and the spinnerets, for plants it is the inside of the flower, the back of the flower, a stem showing the leaves, and the plant habit - you will quickly learn what is important in different groups), and the habitat it lives in. If you can get all of these in one sharp, detailed photo, then that is ideal. But the more pictures the better - iNat allows up to 20 pictures per observation (although the android app only allows 4).
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Remember: only one species per observation. Dont post different types of things on the same observation: iNaturalist can only give one name per organism. Keep it different species on a different observation. If uncertain, do separate observations.
Publicado el
marzo 7, 2023 08:25 TARDE
por
tonyrebelo
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