Reasons for rejection

Possible reasons for rejection include:

Incorrect location - image badly mislocated (i.e. in the wrong square altogether)

Family snap - while people can be in the photo we do not encourage posed photos of your family or friends. 'Selfies' will also be rejected. Also, if children are shown closely enough to be identifiable, consider whether the photographer should have obtained permission from parents. Complaints have been made in these circumstances, and we now have a Safeguarding Policy that covers this in more detail.

Inappropriate content - any image containing material inappropriate for minors. Geograph is used by schools. There should be no nudity, unless distant with nothing really visible. If the content would likely induce giggles or stares from school children, then it is not suitable for geograph. Since 2025 we are required to comply with the Online Safety Act 2023, to protect users from illegal content and activity under twenty-one specified risks.

Too dark - no detail visible. What shows some detail on your computer screen may not show any on other screens.

Too small - the longest dimension of the image should be at least 480 pixels. This figure is very small by today’s standards but reflects the standard set at the start of the project in 2005. 1024px is a recommended minimum now. Images will be displayed up to 1024 pixels on screen, larger than that a link is created to download the larger version.

Insufficient geographical context - for example sunsets, cloudscapes and silhouettes; photos of ships at sea or planes in the air with no land visible. These will be rejected in most circumstances, but might be accepted with the 'Extra' image type if there is some other interest to the image such as weather conditions or astronomical bodies.

Digital alterations to the image, e.g. a frame, date stamp, watermark or overlaid text, or to create a montage. Date stamped images are likely to be rejected and the contributor asked to resubmit without the date-stamp, if at all possible. You may see these features in images from the very early months of the project but they have been banned ever since then. On the other hand, a little tweaking of brightness/contrast and/or rectangular cropping is fine and encouraged to improve the image composition and quality.

Excessive HDR. While High Dynamic Range techniques can often be used to restore detail in light and dark areas of an image, if used to excess it can result in unnatural looking image. Such images can certainly be striking, they are not really suitable for Geograph.

3D (anaglyph) images are not currently accepted on geograph. Infrared images are only accepted if they look reasonably like a normal monochrome photograph of the subject.

Needs to be rotated - a photo taken in portrait mode on a mobile device can appear upright on a computer but is uploaded unrotated and appears 90° sideways. There is a feature to rotate an image at the beginning of the submission process, but if it still appears sideways when it appears for initial moderation, it may be accepted with a bulk correction process used by appointed volunteers to correct these later.

Not rectangular - image should be cropped to a clean rectangle, so maximum amount of image is usable, and resubmitted.

No valid copyright - the submitter may not be the copyright owner (or may not have been authorised by the copyright owner to submit the photo). Note we do have a process so valid Licensors can submit content on behalf of the Original Author, but this requires the two parties to be known to each other. Among images which should not be submitted are those in the public domain, those with expired copyright like old postcards, and images already released under a creative commons licence by others.

Advertising - The image and description should not be substantially an advertisement. Submitting a photo of your own premises is welcomed but a description which is an advertisement is unwelcome. Note that you can put a web link and information about yourself in your profile.

Duplicate image - identical, or almost identical to one already submitted and taken on the same day from about the same position by the same person, and which appears to add insufficient new geographical content. Very similar photos taken by different contributors or on different dates are acceptable, even if they offer nothing new in terms of information.

Poor quality - out of focus, motion blur (from moving camera, some subject blur acceptable if not unusual such as moving cars in low light), tilted horizons/verticals, obtrusive reflections, vehicle interiors, car parts (such as a wing mirror visible), raindrops on lens, flares or other unnatural and excessive photographic artefacts are quality issues that can lead to rejection.

A photo taken from a drone that appears not to have been taken in accordance with the Civil Aviation Authority's Drone Code (link updated March 2024).

Rejected photos are not entirely deleted. They remain on our ‘cloud’ servers and can be viewed by the contributor and moderators and will appear in the list of images in your geograph profile, so if you think your image has been incorrectly rejected (and mistakes do happen!) please use the 'update information' facility on the screen for your image, and explain the problem in the box 'Please tell us what is wrong...'. Equally, feel free to ask for advice on fixing problems through post-processing.

Revised June 2025 - SFC

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