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

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.

Geograph itself hasn't got any data on re-use of images downloaded from here. It wouldn't even be possible to determine who downloaded it in most cases. Google image search https://www.google.co.uk/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi is quite good at finding copies of an image elsewhere on the web. Just drag and drop the image onto the search bar. But of course there's no guarantee that it'll find all other instances of each photo.

If you find an interesting website re-using your or other Geograph photos, consider posting it on the forum thread http://www.geograph.org.uk/discuss/index.php?&action=vthread&forum=2&topic=3179

(from a support request sent to http://www.geograph.org.uk/contact.php )

Yes provided they are accurately located and meet the usual criteria.

If the underground space is artificial such as a mine or railway tunnel, they can only be classed as "accepted", i.e. tagged as "inside" or "close look", rather than qualifying as a "Geograph".

If the underground space is natural such as a sea-cave, limestone cave etc., then if there is a large enough space in view a Geograph status is possible, but in a small space it would still be accepted as a "close look".

With the exception of straight tunnels, getting an accurate position underground in the absence of a GPS signal and without a detailed map of a cave system is tricky. In many cases it may be best just to give 4-figure grid reference (i.e. not try to locate the photo within the square).