if you’re going through PUT /v1/observations/{obsID} or the v2 equivalent, i think you need to include "ignore_photos":1 in your payload, or else you lose your photos if you haven’t included them in the payload.
unfortunately, even though GBIF provides a link back to the photo records and the image files, the photo records are gone at this point. so although you still have the option of getting your image files from iNat’s servers or your own device (uploading from your device might be better since they’ll include the metadata), you no longer have the better option of simply linking the photo records back to the observations.
also note that eventually the orphaned image files on iNat’s servers will probably get deleted.
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it’s unfortunate that the tag you were adding seems to have been to highlight particular observations with notable photos. there’s <50 observations. so hopefully cleanup isn’t terribly difficult, however it must be done.