Photo Submission Guidelines
If you are interested in having your photos showcased on our species pages then read this page carefully as it will answer all of your questions.
Showcasing Your Photos
Whatbird.com and its search engine is an extremely popular and heavily visited web site. Its known as one of the best sites on the internet to identify birds and is consistantly ranked at the top of a search in Google. Whatbird’s parametric search engine is still unequaled as the most accurate way to ID a bird when you only have a small amount of information. Our species pages combine both photo and illustrations which is unusual even today, and include the songs and calls of almost every bird in North America, range maps, and a huge amount of detail we have spent the past 7 years accumulating and organizing. Here is one of our typical species pages for the American Goldfinch. Typically we get over ½ million visitors a month who read over 2 million pages. Consequently the site has a very high page rank. And as some of you know, page rank is a form of currency in today's world. Some of content of the whatibrd species pages are presented in an iPhone program we developed called iBird Explorer. iBird allows you to take the entire web site with you on your phone and does not require an internet connection. Apple loved our app so much they featured it in an iPhone television commercial and it remains an Apple Staff pick. You can learn more about iBird here.
The photographers showcased on the whatbird.com species pages, and also in our iBird products, are among the best on the planet and we go to lengths to expose their talents. If we select your photos for showing on the species pages, and in iBird, we will display your name and copyright right above the phone, along with a hyperlink directly to your web site, blog or gallery. Therefore if a visitor likes your work and wants learn more about you or purchase your photos they will be able to find you with one click. We also add you bio and photo to our contributor’s page.
Given the number of visitors to Whatbird and viewers of iBird this exposure is quite valuable and we treat it so, exchanging the currency of the page rank and the exposure in return for presenting your photos to the birding community. We have no ownership of your work, and we do not sell you work.
Identification is our Goal
The photos we show on the pages are meant to help people learn to identify a particular bird, they are not so much about art as they are about education. Thus we are looking for photos that show off ID marks, that are representative of the coloring and plumage found in typical species. This means we are seeking photos that show the entire birds body filling most of the frame, backgrounds that are not over powering and allow the subject to show up subject and lighting that shows off the birds features. We want photos that are sharply focused (not fuzzy). We also accept photography of birds in flight.
Examples of Photos We Can Use and Can't Use and Why
Here are examples of photos that we can use and can't use and the reasons why. Please read this carefully as it will prevent you from wasting a lot of time and effort and will help you understand what kind of photo we wish to present to our visitors.
| We Can Use These Photos |
We Can't Use These Photos |
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Turkey Vulture by John Schwarz. Correct portrait mode 322px x 403px, bird fills the entire frame, field marks are clear, focus is strong, head is clear, feet show up well. |
Incorrect landscape mode instead of portrait, bird is too small in the frame and is obscured by branches. |
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American Robin by John Schwarz. Photo is a great profile of the species, focus is good, all field marks are clear. |
Photo is in correct portrait format but too small, hard to see entire body because it is covered by the tree branch, head is turned away so you can't see its profile well. |
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Acorn Woodpecker by James Spitznas. Excellent behavior shot of bird holding an acorn in its bill, good field marks, the green sheen is apparent, background is a nice blue, you can see the barring on the breast. |
While this is a good family study the birds are so small in the frame they can't be easily seen unless the image was zoomed. It is also the wrong ratio and is too tall. |
Birds we Need Photographs for
We currently have over 1700 photos on our site. However we are missing photographs for some rare birds which are listed below. If you have any photos of any of these missing birds and would like to contribute them to be viewed by our visitors and iBird users we would be most appreciative.
The species that we need photos for are listed at the bottom the page. Species with no photos are in the 1st column and species with 1 photo are in the
2nd column.
Format
Photos must be in the Portrait format (not landscape) and have the following specifications:
- 322 wide by 403 pixels tall at 72 dpi (dots per inch). This size is necessary so they fit in the area on our page. If they are larger we will have to scale them down.
- Use Photoshop's "Save for Web" and choose the medium quality jpeg (quality = 30). We need to keep the file size low so our pages load faster.
- Images should be no larger than 30K - 60K bytes.
Below is an example of how your photo will appear on the whatbird species page. There is a headline displaying the name of the photo, in this case "American Goldfinch Fall Male". Below the headline is the copyright notice and the name of the photographer, in this case "Jason Means". The name of the photographer is also a hyperlink that when clicked will take the viewer to Jason Means web gallery. This web link will be viewed by thousands of people each month and therefore it is likely your web site or gallery will receive a good deal of traffic.
Identify the Species
The species in the photo must be identified in order for us to be able to use it so please identify the species of bird. We will double check the ID, but unless its identified initially it will be too much work for us to figure it out. Names like “sparrow” or “hawk in California” won't work.
Protecting Your Photos
A few people have asked how they could be assured that people would not use there photos if they are displayed on the species page. My answer is that there is no way to protect photos or any image for that matter from being used by unscrupulous people. The way we deal with this is to only display images that are so small that they would not look good printed and framed (322 pixels at 72 dpi is about 4 1/2 inches wide). If someone wants to use one of our images commercially we license the high resolution version and I would suggest you do the same with your photos.
Submitting Example Photos
The response to our photo project has been overwhelming. If you have photos you would like to submit we ask that you send us a link to a web site photo gallery such as Picasa or Flickr so we can view them all. If you don't have a gallery then we ask that submit only a few examples. Please ZIP up 3 or 4 photos in the format we specified above and then send them using the contact-us link below.
Please do not send multiple photos as it makes it difficult for us to manage.
We appreciate your submissions but we can only use photos that have the bird filling most of the frame, are in sharp focus and sized properly. We also may already have the photos you submit . If we plan to use your photos we will contact you.
Click here to submit your photos. Select the category Photography -> Photo Submissions
After we receive your photos we will email you with further instructions.
Birds we Need Photographs for
We currently have over 2,000 photos on our site. However we are missing photographs for some rare birds which are listed in the PDF. If you have any photos of any of these missing birds and would like to contribute them to be viewed by our visitors and iBird users we would be most appreciative.
I hope this answers your questions about submitting photos to WhatBird.
Jane Wright
Whatbird.com Senior Editor