Europe's premier monthly birding magazine.

Submission of photographs to Birding World

Good quality bird photographs are, of course, always welcomed by Birding World. Lesser quality photographs are also welcomed when they depict particularly rare birds. Photographs should be sent to the editor:

Steve Gantlett, Birding World, Sea Lawn, Coast Road, Cley next the Sea, Holt, Norfolk, NR25 7RZ

steve@birdingworld.co.uk

Most rare bird photographs are taken in digital format nowadays, and these are normally best sent by email. If you have a number to choose from of a particular rarity or scarcity, please send a good selection. We are always particularly on the lookout for good ‘different’ or ‘action’ shots, as well as nice ‘portrait’ shots. Needless to say, exclusive images are welcomed.

DEADLINES
Ideally, rare bird photographs in particular should be sent just as soon as they are taken! Rarity photographs are organised and indexed for use that month as they come in (as well as permanently filed for possible later use). They are then short-listed a full week before the end of each month (ie on about the 24th of every month), with ‘better quality gazumpers’ and ‘megas’ slipped in right up to the very last minute of the month. Birding World always goes to print on the last day of the month, but photographs received then will be in good time for the following month!

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS
The subject of the best formats in which to submit digital photographs is a long and complex one, but it is normally best simply to send the original, best resolution, straight-off-the-camera files, without any computer cropping or adjustments. Reducing image sizes before sending can compromise the quality of the final printed image, while previous cropping can restrict our choice of page-layout for photographs.

Jpegs
Jpegs are very acceptable and are easier to handle than Tiffs. Normally, jpegs that are about 2Mb each provide absolutely plenty of information for good quality reproduction of photographs but, in practice, jpegs of as low as 1Mb – or sometimes even much lower – can, and often do, make lovely Birding World half-page sizes. As soon as a jpeg is re-saved, it loses some quality so, particularly when jpegs are sent, it is normally best not to crop or adjust them in any way.

Tiffs
To do full justice to the amazing quality that professional quality digital SLRs are capable of (as opposed to digiscoping) tiffs are definitely better and 16-bit (rather than the standard 8-bit) images can be beneficial too, especially when more subtle plumage tones and features are present. However, if the shots are not super-sharp, tiffs have no practical benefit over jpegs and are just more difficult to handle because of their larger file size than jpegs.

Adjusting photographs
Although original 'straight-off-the-camera' files are normally preferred, experts in ‘Photoshop’ are very welcome to adjust the exposure and file sizes of their photographs before submission. If you consider yourself an expert in ‘Photoshop’ (Do you fully understand ‘Curves’ and ‘Hue/Saturation’, let alone ‘Sponge’ and ‘Dodge’?) and you can confidently enhance the exposure and sharpness of your photographs without overdoing it, please do. Please do not use ‘Photoshop’ trickery to materially alter the photographs, however, although it is acceptable to remove, say, a particularly offending twig from a photograph.

Cropping Where a bird is very small in the original image size, it may be cropped, although remember that resaving a jpeg potentially loses some quality. Do not over-crop, however, and consider that a photograph which has plenty of surround to the bird can be used both ‘tall and thin’ as a single column in Birding World, or at full-page width, depending on space availability. 

Image resizing Birding World actually prints at 300dpi, but digital photographs should not be resized unless they have first been confidently adjusted to best possible exposure and sharpness if necessary. Also, it is most important to remember that it is the final image as it appears on the page that is printed at 300dpi, not the (relatively) uncropped image supplied: the bird in the image may or may not be heavily cropped on the page to suit the final page layout. Thus, if reducing a large image size down to the optimum image size for printing in Birding World, the bird in the image – and not the whole image of the bird plus its surroundings – should be 300dpi at 6 inches (the approximate full page-width of Birding World).

Photographs by email
Email is the preferred way to received photographs. Generally, full resolution versions of photographs are welcomed in the first instance. Only if there are many images to choose from and original file sizes are much over 2Mb is it really worth sending low resolution preview versions first. Individual emails of up to 10Mb can be accepted, but for more than this (or when there are several approaching this size) it is best to post the photographs on CD (monthly deadline allowing).

CAPTIONS
As well as the species name, it is essential to provide the locality, month and year of each photograph supplied. The first two in particular are most important, because they give vital information on geographical variation/subspecies and on the timing of plumages and any moult visible in the photographs.

CONVENTIONAL PHOTOGRAPHS
Just as original digital files give the best reproduction, for those who have not gone digital, the originals of other forms are preferred (slides or colour negatives) as we have our own professional quality scanning equipment for these, whereas working from prints gives an inevitable slight drop in quality. Because we have our own scanning equipment, slides and colour negatives can be returned almost by return of post.

COPYRIGHT
We thank all photographers for the photographs they submit to Birding World. A fee is payable for each one published and the copyright remains with the photographer.