The numbers

Submitted: 34. Approved: 30. Rejected: 4. Distribution: 11 Caribbean, 9 Pacific, 10 highlands.

What changed

In post #2 I wrote that giving up rights under CC0 felt strange, and I want to answer that honestly rather than tidily.

It still feels strange. What changed is that I stopped thinking of the photo as the thing I made. The thing I made is the availability of the photo, the fact that a species which had no usable free image now has one. That isn’t diminished by someone else using it without crediting me. If anything it’s the point.

In post #3 I argued there was a representation gap in free image libraries, weighted heavily toward temperate northern species. Having now added thirty images to it, I’d say the gap is larger than I estimated and my contribution is smaller than it felt while I was making it. Thirty photos against a country with an enormous number of documented species is a rounding error. That’s not discouraging, it’s just the accurate scale. Open source works because a lot of rounding errors accumulate.

In post #2 I also asked how strict the review process was. Answer: strict enough to reject [four] of my photos for reasons I mostly agreed with once I understood them. Community review isn’t a formality.

The challenges

Field conditions were the obvious one, low light under Caribbean canopy, harsh light in the dry Pacific, cold and fog above 3,000 meters. Each region needed a different approach and I learned each one by getting it wrong first.

The harder challenge was species identification. Photographing an animal takes minutes. Confirming its scientific name well enough to publish it under a license that lets the whole world copy it took considerably longer, and in two cases I gave up and submitted the photo without a species name rather than guess.

The one I didn’t anticipate: choosing between the photo I wanted to take and the photo that was actually needed. A quetzal is a better photograph. A volcano junco is a better contribution.

What happens next

The photos stay online after this course ends. Anyone can use them, for anything, without asking me.