Photohunting for Wikimedia/Introduction

What is Photohunting? Overview "Photohunting" is the deliberate seeking-out of photographic opportunities, wherever they may present themselves. When taking pictures for Wikimedia, we are taking pictures for one of two reasons: Adding a photo to Wikimedia Commons in general, as part of its mission as a photographic repository Depicting a specific item (a person, a place, an object, etc.) associated with a Wikidata page. We'll get more into Wikidata in a later section, but for right now, all we need to know is that all Wikipedia pages have a Wikidata page, but not all Wikidata pages have Wikipedia pages. Tools Camera While a professional camera is definitely an asset to taking photos for Wikimedia, it is not a requirement. Most of my photos were taken with iPhones, and that's still my go-to piece of photographic equipment. Why? Because: It's smaller and thus more mobile, I don't stand out as much taking photos with my phone as I do with my professional camera The file sizes are smaller – on Wikimedia, we don't need insanely-high pixel counts for photos to serve their purpose, and in fact, that helps ease the load on storage It's easy to add geolocation data to the photos (though you can do this with more recent pro cameras, as well), which can help from a data standpoint Geolocation Cameras, including smartphone ones, can add coordinates to the picture file when the photo is taken. The reason that geolocation information is important, depending on your preference, is that coordinates on your Wikimedia Commons picture file will let your picture show up as a blue dot on WikiShootMe. If you do not want this data included, you'll need to strip the metadata from your file before you upload. File Types JPEGs are the standard file format for the kind of photos you take and upload to Wikimedia, like for depicting something on Wikidata or Wikipedia. PNGs are also an acceptable file format, but they take up more storage because they are a "lossless" file format, whereas JPEGs are not. Currently, HEIC/HEIF files are not compatible with Wikimedia, even though those are file types used on many smartphones. Most smartphones will also give you the option of taking pictures in JPEG format, instead, but if you take a picture in HEIC format, there are a couple of options to fix it: Use a file-converter website and convert it to a JPEG Enlarge the photo as much as you can on your phone or computer, then take a screenshot of it, which saves in PNG format If you want to include geolocation in your photos, know that converting the file may lead to a loss of that data, but screenshotting definitely will. You'll have to either find a way to preserve the data, or add the coordinates back in when you upload your file. WikiShootMe See the next chapter for information about WikiShootMe, another integral tool for the photohunting journey. 0%