Reasons for rejection

Possible reasons for rejection include:

• Doesn't offer geographical context - sunsets, cloudscapes and silhouettes may fall into this category.

• 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.

• 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.)

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

• Too small - longest dimension of image should ideally be at least 480 pixels, or even better 640 pixels. If the contributor chooses to make a larger size available it will displayed up to 1024 pixels, larger than that a link is created to download the larger version.

• Digital alterations to the image[1], e.g. to add a frame, dates, texts, etc., 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.

• 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 on geograph if they look reasonably like a normal monochrome photograph of the subject.

• Needs to be rotated - edit and resubmit. Sometimes portrait photos can be shown upright on a computer but upload unrotated, these need the rotation set during upload. Images can be rotated at the beginning of the submission process but not at a later stage.

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

• 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.

• Image or description is 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.

• Image is identical to one already submitted, or is almost identical to one already submitted and is taken on the same day from about the same position such that it appears to add insufficient geographical content to that already submitted.

• Poor 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 appears not to have been taken in accordance with the Civil Aviation Authority's Drone Code.

We keep rejected submissions on file, and they 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 "edit picture information" 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.

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[1] A little tweaking of brightness/contrast and/or rectangular cropping is fine and encouraged.

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