As long as you take your pictures respecting the environment and following the written rules of iNaturalist you’re free and welcome to post them here.
That user has no right to tell you that your hands shouldn’t be in the picture, you don’t have to appease anyone’s aesthetic preferences.
Likewise, here I am steadying the black widow for the camera: https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/80363690?size=large
I once found a small lizard going toward my “water shoes” I was wearing because there was a hole by the big toe and he was looking to hide there. I remember taking a few pictures quickly yet they were probably on another camera before iPhones had cameras. So I doubt they were posted because I wasn’t familiar with iNat. either. Anyway, I thought it was cute and funny at the same time and I’d post them if I could find them. I may have to check my personal computer yet it may have been a few computers back. I think it was also before we moved here 9 yrs ago. Gosh, that would put me in a younger age bracket! And no toes were seen, just blue Keds with a hole and a lizard.
< mischievous me!
I usually get people to touch bark of trees, feel thorns or even sting themselves with nettles. Usually urban visitors get a thrill. Leeches are common place and most people, unfamiliar with them think of them as some really creepy ancestors of vampires (or something on those lines). For them I specially pick up leeches and show them and so my hands pop up in pictures.
I think as long as we are respectful and not hurting something it is kind of ok.
@amdibley and welcome to the forums :-)
I have usually been advising people to avoid taking and posting pictures that show fingerprints. This is not an aesthetic issue but more a privacy issue. Considering the wide use of bio-metrics in everyday surveillance and identification its a matter of time before bio-metric based security is severely compromised
Nicotiana tabacum bum
I agree completely. Some people say I’m paranoid, but a photo of my fingerprint is something I’d rather not share for many reasons. If other people choose to do so then that’s their choice :)
A-ha! I found the photos of skink crawling in the hole of my shoe on the pc. Yet this was taken with a digital camera and I hope I can post it here. See, the thing is that I never “saved” images, yet rather copied it on to a .doc. I do lots of.docs with pictures. I don’t do computers so my husband will help me. I don’t know how soon I’ll get it posted… yet I think it’s too funny not to post! Just my opinion
Sounds interesting! You’ll probably need to copy the image in the .doc and paste it into a graphics program (e.g. Paint, which comes with Microsoft) because I think iNaturalist only allows uploads of .jpg files.
I found it! The “skink in the hole”! (Suddenly, the breakfast my dad made us when we were young, “a frog in the hole” popped up from memory.)
And there you have it! The skink that crawled off our dry stack stone wall in the front yard and ran up to my shoe. He stayed on the outside trying to get under the shoe to hide and then he came to the left side, saw the hole, and popped in fast! I was continuously taking pictures when I first saw him, yet this is the one that says it all. This is also the half of the front yard that I converted to a moss lawn after removing the grass. Winged Elm seeds seen in photo germinate quickly so we wait till they grow an inch or two and then hand-pull them, best when the ground is wet. The tree is such a beautiful autumn gold and sitting in the front corner, everyone coming down the street sees it when they come to a stop. We quickly learned that we could put window screening over the area where the samara drops the most, thus eliminating having to remove them by hand. We were surprised by the amount collected by the end of the season! We do the same thing over our stream before the willow oak acorns drop, because they will germinate in the water also.
…“and that is the rest of the story!”

Ah, it’s amazing the different stories that can emerge on these threads. I hope you are keeping those shoes to provide a refuge and good size guide for any more skinks (small snakes, spiders,…) you might come across.
And what a beautiful skink! We don’t get any of those down under.
Love the lawn too.
Lovely skink and great story!
I want this thread to keep going, so here’s a fun encounter from late last year https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/141216453. Picking him up wasn’t entirely necessary, but I had to show the other people at the visitor center this colorful wasp.
Thank you sedgequeen, chrisc, egordon_88 and all the others that liked the posting. I am noted for talking a lot and that carries over to what I write also. Sometimes I feel I may turn off some people, yet they can skip over it if they want. I just get excited about what I find, as I recently posted in the “Trash found”(?) forum. I like antiques so old bottles appeal to me. Finding hidden treasures is fun also. Yet a skink in my shoe tops them all!
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.