This morning I was IDing and I found an observation of an opossum with one ID to species. It’s a picture of some device showing a picture of an opossum, with the device framing the picture. Other times I’ve seen pictures of screens, where the pixels of the screen are clearly visible in the picture o…

There has been another topic about it before and the reasoning behind the “why” mostly was (and none is my personal opinion, comment or approach): (1) Taking a picture of the camera screen in the field to tag it with geo data + later forgetting to replace the image (2) user incapable of transferin…

See this thread: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/observations-of-critter-on-computer-screen/73039

It is the identifier’s choice. My choice is - I will not ID a picture of a picture. I leave a polite comment. Mark as Reviewed and Next. iNat guidelines say it is OK, but there are issues around Is that the observer’s photo (for copyright) ? Is the date when observed ? Is the location where obser…

And this way identifiers know to wait … https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/334973373

Out of curiosity, does screenshots from a trail cam count in this discussion? Technically I’m grabbing the picture from a video that a camera took.

Trail cam is a valid obs. You wouldn’t plan to upload a better image later ?

Yes, there are many other threads that address this question, see: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/using-photos-taken-of-image-from-another-screen/67897 https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/photo-of-screens-back-of-camera/32755 https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/a-photo-of-a-photo-of-an-animal-consider-w…

Please don’t hot link other users’ observations on the forums.

My interpretation of the comment is that it was approving of the practice in the observation (noting that the image of a cameraback is a placeholder observation to add better pics later as context for IDers) and not pejorative. It’s ok to link to specific iNat content on the forum as positive exampl…

I posted one observation that was a picture of a picture. In my case the original was taken with a dying bridge camera where I lost the transfer cable and I couldn’t for some reason read the data card directly with a USB card reader. So I was forced to take a photo of a photo with my primary camera…

Pictures of pictures

General

DianaStuder January 17, 2026, 4:43pm 12

I wonder if schoenitz looked at the obs ? I see that 28 others got the point.

59 …

Topic		Replies	Views
Photo of screens/back of camera General	24	1071	June 15, 2022
What is the policy for photos of photos? General	9	356	August 4, 2026
Observations of critter on computer screen General	26	898	December 10, 2025
Using photos taken of image from another screen General	15	836	August 6, 2025
Screenshot Photos General	31	1984	March 25, 2021

Pictures of pictures

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