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Attention nature photographers!The BDI Field Guide is a community effort. Become one of our contributing photographers (or illustrators, recordists, etc.) and help us continue to expand the Guide. For a list of pictures we need, click here. If you contribute one or more pictures, we'll set up your own section in the Contributors' Gallery to showcase your materials. Here are the details:
And...If you have friends who have pictures or other materials that you think we would find useful, please tell them about BDI and our web site and urge them to follow through with their own contributions. Thank you for your interest in biological species, natural history, conservation, and the work of the BioDiversity Institute. Copyright 2003, BioDiversity Institute What are we looking for?Have you got photographs, sound recordings, or materials documenting the characteristics of animals and plants gathering dust in your drawers? Would you like to see these put to beneficial use? Would it gratify you to see your own photographs or other productions displayed online? We know how hard it was for you to get that photo of the rarely-seen species or that one of the backyard species posed in just the right way in just the right light. Or to obtain that sound recording in the blare of other sounds in our noisy world. There are few ways that you could more substantially contribute to the success of the BDI Field Guide than by contributing such illustrative material. We will be extremely grateful for any and all that you may care to donate. We would like you to send us such photos and materials for any species of vertebrate animal or higher plant in the world. Later we expect to expand our wish list to other species groups as well. You can either donate such photos or other materials to us outright, or you can offer us a license to copy them and use the copies on our Web site. What are we really looking for?Click here to see the species and plumages for which we have greatest need. What makes for an appropriate picture?We don’t just need typical close-ups of one individual. More distant views showing a species in a typical habitat, many individuals, or individuals of more than one species are also of interest. Pictures of just a part of an individual, if they clearly illustrate a key field mark or other salient feature, may be useful. Sometimes habitat shots alone, if the species you have seen occupying it can be given as documentation, are of value. Even if you see that we already have pictures for a given species, we may have need for better ones, or for those showing some different aspect. We have made room for several pictures of each species on our Field Guide pages so as to enhance the user’s ability to identify the thing they saw, possibly in just a certain light or at a certain angle. Thus we can make good use of all of the kinds of alternative views referred to above. What about material contributions other than pictures?At some point we intend to also add video, sound recordings, and other features to the Field Guide and will be glad to accept any relevant materials that you care to contribute right now. If I send something to BDI, what do I get out of it?...For starters, quite possibly a tax deduction.BDI is a 501c3a publicly-supported charitable organization, and any contribution you make to us can be considered in light of the IRS rules for in-kind charitable donations. BDI can play no role in establishing the value of your gifts for the purposes of tax deductions, but they certainly do have value. Although the value of such materials varies greatly (as is the case with works of art) you may be able to document this value by an appraisal, by previous sales of photographs you or you acquaintances have made, by references to the prices asked by those selling similar pictures online or through the mails, or at the very least by calculating your costs of production. Your own section in our Contributors' GalleryEven if you send us only one picture, you'll get a dedicated section in the Gallery that shows thumbnails and full size images, along with taxonomic information. Copyright and acknowledgmentWhether you contribute the original or just a license to use a copy we will give you credit online for your contribution by displaying your name with an appropriate copyright notice next to each picture. We will also list contact information on the credits section of our Acknowledgements page – if you so choose – so that third parties also wishing to use your photograph or other materials can contact you directly. How can I get my contributions to BDI?You can either donate your photos or other materials to us outright or you can offer us a license to copy them and use the copies on our Web site. Or, if you already have digital copies, please keep reading. Documentation of materialsTotally undocumented pictures and other materials are welcome but well-documented ones, with date, time, geographic location, habitat, and other matters are even more valuable. Even good pictures of species you have yet to identify are of great value. If you intend to send more than just a few photos or other illustrating materials, we presume that you already have the accompanying documentation in some form that we could use. Please e-mail our image librarian at picture-editor@bdi.org to tell us what you have in mind and how we can accommodate you. I want to send digital copies of my photos to BDI. What about file format, size, etc.?If you already have digital image files, we can of course make use of them. We would prefer images in JPEG format with a file size of 15kb or less, if possible, and approximately 400 pixels in the longest dimension. The preferred image resolution is 75 pixels per inch (ppi). If your files are larger than our preferred spec, and you would rather not mess around with image processing software, don't worry -- send them anyway. We can resize your images downward to approximate what works best for us. If your images are too small, though, that can be a problem. Resizing an image upward can result in a picture that is too fuzzy for us to use. If you are sending only one image, or just a few images, you can send them directly to our image librarian at picture-editor@bdi.org. If you have many photos or other materials you wish to convey electronically, you can e-mail the librarian to begin discussing the right method. My materials are in physical form. Where do I send them?Our address is BDI, 190 Palmer Ridge Road, Gansevoort, NY 12831. In the case of licensed use we will make copies and return the originals to you as soon as possible. If there is any related matter you need to discuss before mailing a material contribution, e-mail our image librarian at picture-editor@bdi.org. If you have a large collection that you’d like to contribute, of the sort that wouldn’t fit handily in a box or mailing envelope, please email the librarian to describe what you have and how we might take possession of it, either permanently or temporarily while we make the needed copies. As a BDI image contributor, I want to link my own website to the BDI siteYou can place one of these icon GIFs on your own site, and associate it with an html link to http://www.bdi.org.
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