Just for fun: What's the largest number of identifiable species you've ever/could conceivably capture in a single photo?

Nature Talk
1

Have you ever duplicated a photo more than 5 times? More than 10?? Feel free to share pictures.

  • more than 20
  • 10 to 20
  • 5 to 10
  • less than 5

0 voters

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2

I tend to crop my photos before upload rather than duplicating them afterward but the most I can remember getting from one original shot is four observations courtesy of some waders I came across on the east coast of Korea. They’re currently observations A, B, C, and D at this link.

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3

There are a few (14) in this prairie tangle: https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/22958149, which was just an offhand snapshot, so if I tried I think it’d be pretty easy to get over 20.

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4

Often possible to get 40-50 (or even more) mollusc species in a single photo of shell grit on a beach.

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5

Prairie diversity :)

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6

I took a trip to Panama in January, and I took photos out the windows of the bus. The plants were so dense that I could not help capturing more than one identifiable organism in one picture. I am not done submitting these observations, so I may find some photos that have even more biodiversity.

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7

All the species:
https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=57723
;-)

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8

i keep hoping i could somehow get the photos from the mapping we did in California. During certain times of year you can easily get 10-20 species visible (if you really know your stuff) in a hillside photo of chaparral.

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9

For a closeup of insects, there was a single remaining blooming goldenrod in mid-October which attracted a horde of pollinators. I didn’t duplicate for every species because I’d gotten clearer observations of some of them on the same day, and I wasn’t interested in getting IDs for the well-known/boring ones, but I count 11 species, not including the goldenrod itself.

https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?on=2017-10-13&place_id=any&subview=grid&user_id=jeremyhussell&verifiable=any

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10

I tend to take close-ups of individuals, but here’s a shot of my wall: https://inaturalist.ca/photos/3885231. Thinking 30+ species easy.

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11

This is the best answer!

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12

yeah, I was thinking night lighting could get you easily 20+ (if not MORE)!!

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13

20+ would be easy with a setup, but personally I try to avoid more than a few per photo. An observation benefits most when the individual in question is highlighted specifically (in other words, not one out of 20+ species in a photo that is duplicated 20 times!).

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14

This is true! Small seashells in a good patch of tropical shell grit!!!

15

This might be stretching the definition of identifiable, or your computer has a better graphics card for zooming than mine does.

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16

Doesn’t have to be identifiable if there’s a 0% chance of any species NOT being in the photo ;)

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17

Northern Mockingbird 13 times. I see them so often in my area that I have quite a few observations of them and even more that I didn’t bother to photograph or left out of my observations.

18

if you include Google Maps air photos i could zoom around and get a few hundred species no problem. But that’s kinda cheating

19

I want to go to there!

20

I can’t think of too many where I got a much because I generally try to avoid that, but there was a photo I took of lichens a while ago that had 6 or 7 different lichens in the photo.