UPDATED: What to know about image submissions?

We have plenty of time to make our bird photography database complete, yet we already started accepting excellent images. In this blog post I share a few more thoughts about the submission process.

First of all, anyone interested is asked to register via this secure Google Form. This is for nothing else just being a part of the potential contributors club. It is a simple ‘Showing my interests‘ message by a photographer to the editorial team.

Ways of photo selection

The editorial team picks a photo from the gallery of the photographer;
The photographer selects her/his best suitable photos for consideration.

The first option certainly doesn’t allow the editorial team full insight into the photographer’s complete image library. The editorial team is selecting a potential contributing photographer based on the portfolios available on their website, or by the style and quality of bird photography presented.

Image file specifications

Before final image selection is made the editorial team need to judge wether the desired photo really meets some criterias. Images being shared with the editors should meet the following criteria.

Image size is 1,500 pixels on the longer side;
Unprocessed JPEG (NO sharpening, NO, colour correction, NO adjustments and NO cropping);
NO added image border;
NO watermark and any text on the image;
File name example: SteveHarris_AmericanOystercatcher_Florida_001.jpg;
Every file must be uniquely named;
Original file has to be available as RAW (no need to send it now!).

Sharing

Photographer is asked to share JPGs via Dropbox. This is probably the best known cloud service. Upon interest, editor creates a specified shared folder for each photographer. Photographer has to ask for shared folder with providing his/her email address.

Priority species

Since this monumental work have been split into volumes, we don’t have to get image samples of all the shorebird species at the very moment, but only of the species of Volume 1. These species include as follow:

Magellanic Plover
Snowy Sheathbill
Black-faced Sheathbill
Great Stone-curlew
Beach Stone-curlew
Eurasian Stone-curlew
Indian Stone-curlew
Senegal Thick-knee
Water Thick-knee
Spotted Thick-knee
Double-striped Thick-knee
Peruvian Thick-knee
Bush Stone-curlew
Egyptian Plover
European Golden Plover
Pacific Golden Plover
American Golden Plover
Grey Plover
Pied Avocet
American Avocet
Red-necked Avocet
Andean Avocet
Banded Stilt
Black-winged Stilt
White-headed Stilt
Black-necked Stilt
Black Stilt
Ibisbill
Magellanic Oystercatcher
Blackish Oystercatcher
Black Oystercatcher
American Oystercatcher
African Oystercatcher
Eurasian Oystercatcher
South Island Oystercatcher
Pied Oystercatcher
Variable Oystercatcher
Chatham Oystercatcher
Sooty Oystercatcher

Samples

This project is not focusing on publishing artistic photos of shorebirds. High quality photos of shorebirds showing either different plumage variations, typical behaviours or bird(s) in their habitat are preferred. In every case we prefer low level photography!