How to submit photos and images to the eAtlas
The eAtlas encourages researchers to submit photos to the eAtlas to show research in action and to provide a library of photos that show environmental places, process and behaviours.
All photos submitted to the eAtlas need to be accompanied with metadata that describes what the photos shows (a caption), a title, who needs to be attributed, location of the photo and licensing. To supply this metadata you can:
- Use the eAtlas Image Metadata Editor application to tag up photos prior to submission.
- Or complete the eAtlas Image Submission Spreadsheet and submit this along with the photos.
Photos without basic metadata (a description and attribution) will not be able to be published by the eAtlas.
What types of images should I submit?
The purpose of these images is to illustrate of the type of work you are undertaking and to show some of the key results. Some examples of what these images might illustrate include: project goals, results, scientists in the field or lab, key equipment or sensors, maps, graphs, workshops, relevant animals or scenery.
You should provide images that you are happy to be viewed by the general public and released under an open license (Creative Commons Attribution).
What resolution should I submit?
In general the images should be submitted at the best quality available. This allows us to adjust the image as technologies change in the future. Images should be at least 1000 pixels in width.
How do I submit the images to the eAtlas?
If you have only a few images then simply email them directly to e-atlas@aims.gov.au. The AIMS email system accepts large emails (up to greater than 50 MB). If there is a larger quantity then use a file sharing website such as Drop Box or CloudStor to send the images.
Can I make photo galleries?
Submitted photos can be presented as one or more galleries (example gallery of coral in Torres Strait). To do this you need to tag which photos need to be in each gallery and give us some descriptive text and title for each gallery.
If you are using the eAtlas Image Submission Spreadsheet you can indicate the gallery for each photo in the "Photo Gallery (optional)" column. Simply make up a name for each gallery you wish to create. All photos with the same "Photo Gallery" name will be filed together.
If you are using the eAtlas Image Metadata Editor application then you can specify the gallery using the keywords field. Simply use: "GALLERY=Name of my gallery".
There is no form for submitting the title and descriptions of each gallery. Simply provide this information in your submission email.
Geotagging of images
If at all possible images submitted to the eAtlas should be geotagged, which means that their exact location is recorded. This allows these photos to be used for scientific use and subsequent revisits of sites in the future. In the future the eAtlas will show all geotagged photos as an interactive map. There are many ways of geotagging your images. The following are some suggested starting points:
- Photos taken with smart photos are often already geotagged if location services are enabled when the photos are taken.
- You can synchronise a camera with a GPS track and use this information to work out the location of the photos.
- Use gps4cam app to record the GPS locations on a smart phone or tablet. It then encodes the track onto a QR code image that you take a photo with your camera. Their desktop photo then scans the QR code then uses the date taken times on the photos to work out the matching location for the photos. This location information is then saved to the photos.
- Use Adobe lightroom to geotag the photos.
- Specify the locations in the submitted eAtlas Image Submission Spreadsheet or eAtlas Image Metadata Editor application using a map such as Google Earth to work out the locations.
eAtlas use of the images
The images submitted will be used on the eAtlas website and housed in the eAtlas repository along with other products from each project. These images will be presented to the public in the body of the project web page and also as a photo gallery (depending on the number of images).
The images are collected to enhance the visual appeal of the project content on the eAtlas and to allow the project research to be discoverable through Google and other search engines when using an image search.
Licensing
All images submitted to the eAtlas should be made available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence.
This licence allows anyone to copy and enhance (adapt or modify) the source material and make their own version available to others (redistribute) as long as they attribute the creator of the original material.
For more information about creative commons licensing see “Creative Commons: A Quick Overview” , or see the “Creative Commons Attribution License”.
In rare cases copyright images can be submitted, but only if there is no open photos are available. In this case permission from the original owner of the photos must be obtained saying that it can be presented on the eAtlas. This permission should be supplied with the submission of the photos. This can be an email from the copyright holder.