Taking pictures during eDNA Expeditions
Share photos and videos showing how you implement the eDNA Expeditions 2026-2028: Make your site, your community, your local team, and your actions more visible! We will publish and share your content through all the project channels. All you need is a phone, our advice below, and making sure you have the written consent of the people represented in your images.
This guide is made of two parts: what kind of photos we need, and how to make them. And remember: we prefer to have too many images than not enough.
Use the up and down arrows to navigate this guide.
Show what's special at your site! Share wide shots of the coastline, the water, the boats, the beach, the rocks, the sampling spot. If there is a landmark, an animal, a specific plant: capture it in an image! Snap a few pictures coming to the site and a few when leaving the site, with and without people.
Single portraits and group shots of your team and members of communities involved in the project: We want the audience to recognise the people behind the data. Don't overdo it: simple portraits with the person looking straight to the camera are perfect! And remember to get the consent of the people that you film and photograph (see below).
Show us the sampling work, the trips to the sampling site, people filling their sample information sheets, filtering water, packing the kit, taking notes. It's all interesting! Take your images mid-action: don't ask for people to stop or pause. Authenticity makes it a perfect story. Show the human connection and happy faces in action. Remember to get the consent of the people that you film and photograph (see below).
Remember to share tight shots: hands manipulating the filter, close-ups of the syringe, the label being written, the water going through. These images show "how it works" and add more to the story.
Anyone recognisable in your photos or videos must give written consent before you upload their image, by signing the project model release. For anyone under the age of majority, a parent or guardian must sign on their behalf. The release can be signed electronically. Keep the signed releases at your site and be ready to share them with the project team on request! For sampling events involving communities or school groups, circulate and collect the releases well ahead of the day: chasing signatures afterwards is much harder!
Go to images.ednaexpeditions.org, choose your site, upload your first picture, write the caption and the name of the photographer, tick the consent box if there are people in the image, and send!
