Geograph - photograph every grid square

We use county information to aid recognition of place names on photo pages and other areas of the site, like helping to disambiguate search terms (e.g. a search for "Gillingham")

For Ireland, it's simple; we just use the traditional counties. Great Britain isn't so easy, which has seen three major county structures;

Ceremonial counties (sometimes known as Geographic)
These were introduced in 1974 primarily as a way to define areas for county councils. Although these are possibly what most people recognize as counties, a suitable dataset to allow us to use these counties would be too costly for us to bear. So we must compromise a little...

Administrative counties (also known as district/unitary authorities)
These are the modern 'counties' in use by the current government (since 1997). This is the best dataset we have available, so we display it prominently in the gazetteer line on photo pages. It is also useful for identifying the council responsible for the area. However for large towns/cities, for example Sheffield, which are in their own authority (i.e. the 'county' of Sheffield), we attempt to be clever and display the historic county instead.

Historic counties
These are the counties that have evolved over many hundreds of years and were in active use until 1974. We use this data as a fallback - where we've opted to display the administrative country on a photo page, you can often find the historic county by hovering over this title.

For a more in depth explanation, see http://www.abcounties.co.uk/ . (However beware that the site doesn't use the exact same terms.)

To see lists of counties in each structure see the Explore Section.
http://www.geograph.org.uk/explore/#counties

If you are looking for squares to obtain a point, try the coverage maps, and look for green squares; also accessible from that page are various printable checksheets for easy reference in print form. More technical users might enjoy GPX, or Memory Map downloads.

Many of the squares have been captured but only have a few photos; check out the depth map, from which you can find under-represented squares. In the same vein we have a number of maps to show the distribution of photos within a square, usually on a centisquare grid, which divides a grid square into 100 squares, each 100m by 100m.

We have also recently introduced a new map, "Recent Only" this shows recent photos. Help us keep the coverage current by photographing squares without any recent photos (orange or green).

Also look out for Red pin icons around the site, click them to take you to the links page for the location. From that page you can access textual lists of squares in need of photos (as well as direct links to many of the maps on the site).)

The depth map
http://www.geograph.org.uk/map/?depth=1
displays this graphically. You can zoom in on your area of interest by clicking on the map and the colours show the number of images in each square.

It depends on which kind of points you're chasing. If it's good old first-geograph points you're after, the answer is probably 'Ireland', although a handful are still left on the big island too. Many of them are mudflats and military installations, though, so good planning and potentially letter writing for permission may be involved. First-geograph points are available in squares shown in green or orange on this map http://www.geograph.org.uk/mapbrowse.php - zoom into your region of interest. Occasionally, squares that have become 'green' again because a mislocated photo was moved are announced on the forum at http://www.geograph.org.uk/discuss/index.php?&action=vthread&forum=2&topic=8428&page=0 . Expect an imminent mass pilgrimage of Geograph-ers to these, though!

There are also other points that you might like to collect. Personal points are awarded for _your_ first geograph for a square. This map http://www.geograph.org.uk/mapbrowse.php?mine helps you find your personal green squares.

If you are the 2nd, 3rd or 4th visitor to a square and submit a geograph for it, you also get a repeat-visitor point for that. The best way to find which squares have had few visitors is the draggable map http://www.geograph.org.uk/mapper/ . You need to change the data overlaid on the Ordnance Survey map by clicking the blue '+' sign top right. Then select 'contributor depth'. This shows the number of different contributors to each square, so if it shows a '2', then you can get a 3rd-visitor point if you upload a picture for that square.

Finally, there are TPoints. They are awarded for geographs which were taken at least five years earlier and later than any existing ones, so you can get a TPoint for a current geograph if nobody has uploaded one taken in the last five years before you. If you enable the TPoint layer in the draggable map (again, via the blue '+'), you can see to which squares this currently applies. You can also get a TPoint for an archive shot which falls outside the periods five years either side of any previously uploaded geographs, but the map doesn't show this.

Certainly - the points system is there to encourage people to make that extra effort to capture squares we don't have photos for yet, but we welcome additional images, perhaps showing a different subject, or a different time of year. You could be gaining yourself a personal point too.

Everyone sees things differently - feel free to give us your take on any square. Some squares have been done in considerable detail, helping to more fully document and add depth to a square. In particular, watch out for things others may have missed - the coverage maps can help with this.

Long term, multiple images taken at different times, even of the same subject, help to document change or the lack thereof.