Site Photos: Guidance for Posters and Approvers

Hello All:

Wanted to start a thread that provided some guidance for both posters and approvers around what makes a good site photo and what are some things that may cause your photo to be rejected. I'll start with some opininions, but feel free to chime in with your ideas as well.

A good site photo shows something of interest from the site itself, and in most cases, not a view from the mine or locality of surroundings. Of course, the photo should be in focus and a scale or FOV or some sort of reference to size should be included. When known, specific names or identifiers of adits, shafts, drifts, levels, or other openings or specific pits should be listed. In situ photographs showing mineralized zones, pockets, veins, or crystals are highly deired as many of us never get to see the minerals we collect except in a cotton-lined box or dsplay. Just make sure that these are in focus and that the minerals and sizes are well identified and that the light level is sufficient.

Reasons why your photo may be rejected include: out of focus, too dark/bright, not relevant content, too much like existing pictures, scale/FOV missing, wrong locality/description and I'm sure others I can't think of.

Hopefully, this will lead to some guidance being added to the Mindat Manual asa reference.

Cheers from NorCal, John

"God gave me the stubbornness of a mule and a fairly keen scent." - Einstein

Hello John,

> too much like existing pictures
There's no such rule.
We wouldn't want duplicates of the same photo, but several photos of the same specimen or locality will not be rejected, not even the 1000th variation of locality x. At least not just because it is the 1000th shot.

> a scale or FOV or some sort of reference to size should be included.
There's no such rule for locality photos. Size info is welcome, of course, but it is often not necessary to get a good idea of the dimensions at the site.


I wish I knew a way of encouraging people to do more locality photos.
And I wish I could get people to take photos of the host rocks and the entire geological setting, not just the pockets.
This requires a minimum understanding of the situation at the locality, of course.



Slightly off topic:
The most common reasons for rejecting or questioning a photo are listed in the documentation.
I have to admit that the list is somewhat hidden and even I had to be patiently reminded by David that it is publicly documented, so I'm pointing it out once again: [manual.mindat.org]



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2012 09:47AM by Amir C. Akhavan.