Another aspect to consider when taking pictures of notable figures is that even if they're not notable yet (for example, a band that is just starting out), taking a picture now may be useful for the future if they do become notable - I took a photo of Wigwam in 2018, when they hadn't released any music and before I'd even thought about editing Wikipedia, and now six years later they're notable and that's the only freely-licensed picture of them! Suntooooth, it/he (talk/contribs) 08:35, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You hooked me in with beautiful pictures of nature (The Nada Lake picture genuinely reminds me of Ansel Adams' works; gorgeous!), and then you gut-punched me with the glaciers. Thank you so much for putting this together. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 14:16, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The very last picture I uploaded (ten minutes ago), I did not add it to any Wikimedia project, but I am sure it is good for something, and someone will use it at some point.
Thanks. A couple of comments. First, unfortunately many pictures on Commons are crap, so even decent quality pictures are in high demand. At some point, about five-six years ago, I discovered that I just do not have any useful images available to illustrate the Russian Wikivoyage article on Roskilde, a reasonably popular tourist destination, and I had to upload mine. Second, whereas the English Wikipedia articles often do not need new pictures, there are also other Wikimedia projects (including Wikivoyage, where tons of images are needed), and external reusers. I often see that users find my files on Commons, which I uploaded but did not add to any articles on any projects, and add themselves to the projects. I also find a lot of usage of my pictures at the external sites, including Forbes, USA Today, and Britannica.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:20, 6 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When I took photos of Chichibugahama, considered by some to be the best sunset spot in Japan, I assumed there would already be sunset photos of it, but there weren't any. It's surprising how many things have no photos. Photos of Japan (talk) 18:50, 7 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Photos of Japan It may be that non English speaking countries are underrepresented on Commons, but as far as I can tell we have no photos of Sunrise, Washington at sunrise either. (And it's closed until next summer, grr!) Thanks for your contributions. (t · c) buidhe02:34, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Besides places there are often surprisingly few pictures of mundane objects. Even many mobile phone models lack pictures. The problem is often worse for 1980s-early 2000s period. Museum imports can include older images and camera phones started to really become more commonplace later, but the period just before Wikipedia existed is often quite bare. Even if there are some pictures there could be more about different styles etc. Do you have a box of old junk in storage? Consider taking photos of it. Similarly while the really famous places may have a glut of images, a small stream near you or a bridge, park or similar you often go past may have none. Even if there is no article about the specific subject a photo might be welcome for larger "nature of ...", "economy of ..." or similar article. MKFI (talk) 12:42, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some thoughts from my experience in Paris working with a Wiki-photographer:
Photographers like taking beautiful pictures, but most of our images will be displayed at 300px max, so "decent quality" (as Ymblanter (talk) notes) is often all I require as an article writer. The effort to get beautiful images often prevents getting any at all.
Like MKFI, I am often looking for mundane objects like buses, bus stops, railways stations etc. At one point I mentioned to my photographer that I had met a blind photographer in Rio. She encountered him in Paris and took a photo of him, which I used in the article on blind photography.
I often deliberately use a different image to one that has already been used elsewhere so the readers don't keep seeing the same images if the follow the links. So multiple images of the same thing are welcome.
Once the images are up on Commons, other editors will use them. In some cases they cropped group images to produce new ones of specific individuals.
Thank you for this article: it spurred me to upload some pictures of Mungo National Park. Although that already has some quite good pictures, I figured some more freely available, such the one to the right, couldn't hurt. Cremastra (u — c) 22:35, 8 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Terrific article! I would also urge everyone to take pictures of the absolutely most mundane infrastructure and dull-normal stuff in your town. Like a functioning bridge would be too fancy. Stuff like:
the post office
the school(s)
the city hall
the records office
the hospital
the library
the store
the utility company
the bus station
the boarded-up derelict building
the bike path
the park
the produce market
the fish market
the community center
the public pool
the historic-site plaque that stands in front of an empty field
the cemetery
To you it's very very boring, but we have uses for all these kinds of images and your photo may be clutch. Thank you in advance! jengod (talk) 19:15, 9 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Jengod: You are my kind of photographer! The last major photo project I worked on was to make sure that every municipality in Pennsylvania had at least one photo. (There are about 3,000 municipalities in PA - 3 or 4 of us worked on the project over a year or 2 and got about 90% of them) Your list is almost exactly the things I'd look for. But please add in churches. In a small town this is always the perfect place to park, except on Sundays. Libraries are very good places too - you can park, take a break (water, air conditioning, etc), and upload some pix. The stores at the corner of Main St. and State St. are usually especially good, as are courthouses. I suppose I've taken a few boarded up buildings, but never thought that was what I was looking for. There's one type of photo that I'd never place anywhere on Wikipedia. I call it the New Jersey standard photo, all you need for a NJSP is to make sure the center-line of the road is in the center of the photo. I'll add a small gallery in a minute, to show what (I think) are just the kind of photos that should be somewhere on-Wiki. Thanks for your list! Smallbones(smalltalk)17:57, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Doc James AFAIK only Wikimedia sites care about FOP. But as you likely know, we do (see c:Commons:Project scope/Precautionary principle). I have talked to many people who find this very annoying and who stopped or limited contributing images to Commons because of that (myself included). Thank you for telling me about nccommons org; it would be nice if there was a system to automatically copy images from Commons there (although even that it could only work as a niche archive, as images hosted there could not be used on Wikimedia projects). Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here03:05, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Plan to get a tool built to move images from Commons to NC Commons. AF WP has consensus to use NC Commons and we have a statement supported by legal regarding this for NC images.[1]
I learned this the hard way. At one point, I illustrated all the public art in a U.S. city by taking photographs over a period of time, then adding them to a new WP article in a carefully annotated table. It was only after doing all that, that I learned that Freedom of Panorama over public art is not a thing in the U.S., and I had to delete almost all of the images (one water fountain designed by a notable sculptor apparently was not copyrightable for arcane reasons). Kind of a painful lesson in IP law. ☆ Bri (talk) 16:14, 11 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes certainly. Use your WP account to log in over there via OAuth and I will grant you privileges. The current 8.6 million media files are mostly medical but we are open to all NC and ND licensed content and would also be happy to host open material regardless of freedom of panorama.[2]Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:57, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know copyright reform tends to get pushed down the agenda, but it would be great to campaign for freedom of panorama in more places. It's surprisingly inconsistent between countries—even within Europe, the UK and Poland (for example) are fairly permissive but France and Italy very much are not. Which limits opportunities for photos from Wikimania 2026, though interestingly Kenya seems to have very broad FoP. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?15:34, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We normally require images to be "free" in both the country of origin and the United States, but there is no FOP for artworks and sculptures in the United States! The current policy on Commons is to accept photos of artwork and sculptures that are covered by freedom of panorama in their source country. This policy may change in the future, depending new case law. Hawkeye7(discuss)02:47, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The interested bit HaeB is that Sweden had Freedom of Panorama... But the courts ignored the existing laws. Was thinking we should be more laid back with respect to architecture than sculptures. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:51, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the Sweden situation seems legally complicated (that's why I wrote a court didn't accept its FOP argument above). But my point was that there are indeed mechanisms that are forcing us to comply with legal regimes - we don't want to be in a situation where WMF or local chapters continue to lose court cases and have to pay heavy fines.
That said, I will grant there are websites that are deliberately flaunting what they see as unjust copyright restrictions (e.g. shadow libraries such as Sci-hub or Anna's Archive), and that many people view this as legitimate, useful activism. I'm just not convinced that this is a role that Wikimedia organizations should take on.
Wikimedians have definitely advocated for FOP before, see e.g. this study from 2017:
Wikimedian communities played an instrumental part in reshaping the debate from the users’ perspective and supporting the most adequate expression to this outlook ("Freedom" rather than “exception”) to reverse the rhetoric from a permission into a positive right. No stakeholder has taken a more vocal and influential call in favour of a European freedom of panorama, which materialised through the display of a banner seen by millions of Europeans.
IIRC this was successful in some countries but not in others (and also not in case of the EU-wide copyright reform).
I just wanted to say that this brings me joy and I wish more people would upload photos like these. You don't need to be a great photographer to upload useful photos—a smartphone is perfectly adequate, and "useful" doesn't necessarily mean that it will be immediately used in a Wikipedia article. It can be surprising where photos end up, or how a photo of something from today becomes useful in a few years' time when that thing looks completely different. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?15:44, 12 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Jengod and others that often the most mundane pictures are the ones we need the most! Since we all work in different areas, I'm curious, which types of photos do you all find missing the most often? For me, it's either buildings or BLP portraits. I find that the best opportunity for adding the latter is typically author talks/panel events/the like. Sdkbtalk17:23, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sdkb In terms of articles, what I found is that there are rarely photos for lesser known, but notable biographies. Events are particularly difficult, especially notable one-off events. Buildings and streets are hit or miss, there are many Commons photographers who focus on these, significant geographical features usually not a problem to find something but even then many articles have a lower quality / out of date image and some have no image (for example, Nada Lake above). Subjects outside of the Western world are much less likely to have good photos. (t · c) buidhe03:15, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That pretty much tracks, @Buidhe. I recently discovered this tool that track the pageviews of all my Commons contributions. I wish it were possible to break it down to figure out what my most popular uploads have been (Does anyone know who created/maintains it? I'd love to ping them), but I'd suspect events photos like this one (used at 2020 United States presidential election) are probably up there. Sdkbtalk03:34, 14 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Photos that show details of notable objects, of the kind that can help readers' understanding. Most often illustrations of noteworthy architectural aspects of buildings. Or, to take one of my favorite examples: For the San Francisco cable car system, the internet and Commons are inundated with the typical tourist snapshots of cable cars running along San Francisco streets (to the point where Commons has well-populated categories for every single individual cable car - over 50 of them). But there are much fewer images helping to explain how it actually works, i.e. what makes it unique. (About a decade ago I added some crappy phone snapshots about that which are still serving their purpose at San Francisco cable car system#Operation, but those only cover some aspects.)
That's a good point, HaeB. People often don't think to capture those sorts of things. I'm surprised some of our railway enthusiasts haven't uploaded those sorts of photos to Commons but it goes to show that a quick phone snap can be more useful than you might think. But if a building is notable for its architecture (for example), we probably have reasonable photos of the facade as a whole but probably not any of the details and very rarely the inside or the back or the grounds. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts?12:50, 15 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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Barn built 1877, just south of East Berlin, PA
Gazebo in Allensville, Menno Township, Mifflin County, Pennsylvania. I think the steeple of the church across the street was repurposed
Crouse Pavilion in Littlestown, PA
Amish-area Municipal Building parking lot
Strange object in Juniata Terrace, Pennsylvania
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