I’ve seen plenty of cool photos of observations taken on a good professional camera on this website. But i don’t have opportunity in one and i really like birds that are often so far from people and i get photos with not the best quality. Question is: is it okay to upload this kind of observations? Of course i don’t bring photos to the point of only 2 pixels but still feels uncomfortable among the beautiful photos
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Branta canadensis (Canada Goose) from Massapequa, NY, USA on November 12, 2020 by Robert Levy · iNaturalist
This is probably my lowest quality Research Grade observation. As long as it can be identified, you can(and should!) upload it. Inat is for when and where an organism is observed, not how high of quality the photo is.
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I don’t doubt that you knew what it was but I don’t see how anyone could agree based just on the photo. It could be an island with a tree on it.
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Wow! And i had thought my observations are the poorest. Thank you for the answer!
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just remembering that observations get reviewed by other users of the system, i would say that as long as you’re not submitting more such observations than other users are willing to look at, then it should be fine to submit these kinds of observations. in fact, i would say iNat is uniquely suited for these sorts of observations.
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I think if it were a “weirder” bird, people probably wouldn’t have been willing to ID this one, but this is where the social element of iNat comes in. Someone uploads a really blurry picture of something saying it’s a Canada goose. Someone else sees that picture and says, “Alright. I can see a Canada goose in this picture, and I trust that you know what a Canada goose looks like,” so they agree with the ID. If they were saying it was goose that wasn’t native to the area, or a whooping crane, or the Loch Ness monster, I don’t think this observation would’ve made it to research grade.
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I take completely cruddy photos most of the time. I figure if naturalist can recognize and recommend what type of organism it is, than it’s okay to post.
Bear
When I took this photo, I was debating the whole time if I thought it was a bear or not. I didn’t even point it out to my kids because I didn’t want them to be disappointed if I was wrong. 
. Only when I got home and zoomed in on the photo on my computer was I sure it was a bear. I think it was actually a bear and two cubs, btw. And iNaturalist identified the bear immediately in the zoomed in photo I uploaded. So works for me.
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Yayemaster provides a good example of a photo that should NOT be uploaded to iNaturalist. It’s not identifiable, so just takes up space and improperly makes what should be a casual observation eligible for research grade status..
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wow.
Or - you can Mark as Reviewed - and move on.
Plenty of Unknowns and Needs ID.
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We won’t tell them there are
550 comments here 
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/whats-the-worst-pic-you-uploaded-to-inat/40286
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there really is no reason to id photos that you can’t tell yourself, if you are not comfortable with the ids then just don’t agree with the id, but overall it doesn’t matter how the quality of a photo is, as long as it can be safely and properly identified
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As long as you can identify the organism from the photo that’s good enough. iNaturalist is ultimately for the purpose of gathering data about where and when different species have been seen. If I was sharing to Flickr or Instagram or something most of my photos from iNat would never get posted, because Flickr/Instagram have a different purpose than iNaturalist.
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It’s one of over 50,000 observations for me, so it really doesn’t take up space. I agree that it shouldn’t have been made Research Grade, so I just made it Casual grade.
Yes, that observation is one extreme, but not all observations need to be like Tachycineta bicolor (Tree Swallow) from Oceanside, NY, USA on June 15, 2022 at 12:08 PM by Robert Levy · iNaturalist, Cnemidophorus arubensis (Aruba Whiptail) from Aruba on February 21, 2023 at 12:21 PM by Robert Levy · iNaturalist, or Danaus plexippus (Monarch) from Deer Park, NY, USA on August 14, 2020 at 11:08 AM by Robert Levy · iNaturalist.
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All your bird observations are easily identifiable and therefore easily RG’able, so you could argue that they are high quality because they are eligible for GBIF and other external sources.
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If your photo is identifiable and has accurate location and date, it’s good.
These aren’t my worst, unfortunately, but they’re recent bad photos that were identified.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/295530034
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/295530036
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/295530029
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/291508597
Can you do as well as that? Or better? Then we welcome your photos!
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As others have said, provided you think it has a chance to be IDed, absolutely no problem uploading! There are also ways you can help IDers when photos are lower quality: you can crop the photo, brighten the image (if required), or highlight/circle the organism.
With bird photos taken on phones in particular, I find it very helpful if the uploader points out where the bird is in the shot.
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https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/258931338 is RG, and you can’t even see its head. The location, however, narrows it down to only two species, Common Iora and Indian Yellow Tit, of which it only resembles one.
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The important thing to remember is a good photo is one that has the identifying features, no matter how bad the quality. A poor photo is one that does not have identifying features in, no matter how good the quality and how cool it looks.
Back in 2016 (before I became active on iNats) I wrote two articles illustrating my point
https://nossa.org.au/2016/04/15/what-orchid-is-this-how-photos-can-help-part-one-of-two-parts/
https://nossa.org.au/2016/04/29/what-orchid-is-this-how-photos-can-help-part-two-of-two-parts/
I would also add, I am not a good photographer and have put up some terrible pictures with the question - is this identifyable? - If I get a reply saying no, then I will consider removing it.
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But, apart from scientific data, iNat aims to encourage the ‘ordinary’ non-scientist to engage with nature. We may add an obs with no photo - as our own record of our engagement with nature. A blurry picture is better than nothing at all.
Frankly, for bird photos - this is gate-keeping against people who cannot afford expensive cameras. Or who have other priorities than a bigger and better lens.
iNat is not a photography site. In focus - cropped to the organism - shows field marks? 10 out of 10. Come back to respond to your notifications. And together we will improve the quality of obs and IDs.
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iNat isn’t there to be a photo sharing site, and so a technically ropey image is fine if there’s a fighting chance someone else can ID it. My photos on here range from pretty good to laughable.
Likewise I’ve seen some technically great photos where it’s impossible to ID to species because the salient points aren’t visible.
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