Examples of Good Candidates for Photo Submission

The photos below are ideal ID photos. They are in focus, from a good distance (fairly close up), in natural light, and contain a single peafowl.

A small number (at most 3) of separated or easily-located (ie, front, back) different-morph peafowl that are fully or mostly in frame without obstruction are also fine, but you will need to be clear when providing your identification which bird is which. Groups of peafowl that are all exactly the same morph (for example, a group of blues with no pattern morphs) are also fine, regardless of number.

Front, Back

Adult, Babies

Left, Right

Male, Female

​Good photos may also have been taken to showcase a certain body part (for example, a face or wing) for identification purposes. It is still nice to have good lighting and clear focus where possible.

Ear opening

Silvered saddle on cameo

Head/Face

Wing

Tongue

Ventral primary coverts

Saddle

New vs Old Plumage, illustrating sun bleaching in purple

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Examples of Acceptable Candidates for Submission

Some photos may not hit all of the "good" categories, but may still be fine for submission. 

Below are some photos that have problems, but may still be useful (mouse over or click to reveal the problem in the caption).

Yellowed lighting, but not too bad

Red-yellow lighting, but not too bad

Some backlighting, but still potentially good for ID

Poor lighting, but a good photo of facial structure

Partially obstructed view, but a good comparision between purple BS pied and purple pied

Out of focus, but the shape of the tongue is useful to see

Partially obstructed view, but not too bad, and it's clear

Fencing obstructs view, but the pose is more important than the color in this case

Good angle, lots of shadows obscuring view

Red lighting, but may be able to be adjusted to true colors

May not assist with color ID, but may be useful for other areas of the site.

Yellow, indoor lighting

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Examples of Good Photos that do not make Good Submissions

Sometimes photos are good photos, because they are cute or unique or artful. But these may not necessarily make for photos that will help someone identify a bird, which is the purpose of this site. You may see photos still posted from the first iteration of the site (pre 2020) that would fit into this category, but going forward in order to save on space and load time, and to keep true to our purpose of helping folks identify their birds, The Database will attempt to focus mainly on photos that make for good ID photos.

Below are some examples of photos that do not make for good submissions*, even if they are decent photos.

Good photo, but too many birds, in bad positions

Beautiful, but too much dramatic lighting and a hugely obstructed view

Cute, but lighting makes it hard to see anything useful

Too many birds and obstruction of view/many offscreen parts

Too many birds

Poor lighting, many birds, and obstruction of view

Red lighting makes it impossible to tell true colors

Red lighting and bird is in a bad position to get any ID info from

Obstructed view and lighting makes it impossible to ID

Terrible lighting

Adorable but useless for ID

*Sometimes photos would be good if there were less birds, like the first 2 images in the above gallery. In this case, cropping the photo or using an editor to scribble out the birds you do not want to ID may cause them to become photos good for submission.

Cropped

Cropped and blacked out

Cropped

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Examples of Photos that make Bad Submissions

These are just not helpful or easy enough to use for ID.

This is a turkey.