I upload fewer than 10 per day and often go several days without uploading anything. I find that even one field day where I happen to take a lot of photos is a problem and it can take me a week or more to sort through them, edit and ID them, and upload those I think are worthwhile. I don’t have the time or patience to deal with photos every day and once I get behind on doing something with them it’s hard to catch up. I definitely will never be a major contributor.
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I’ve got sidetracked by identifying and am WEEKS behind with my own photos …
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This might not be for you but I treat iNat differently than I would uploading pics to show off on Facebook or other social media. I used to crop but I take the majority of pics attempting to fill the frame and wide angle shots for the entire organism so the IDer can see the environment it is in. With few exceptions I only edit photos that I think are ones I’ll share outside of iNat. Ever since I started doing that the job became much easier and faster.
But I definitely know the feeling of wanting photos to be perfect. As a professional journalist for 43 years I struggle to get pics for my works in newspapers/magazines and books just perfect. It can take me three hours just to get one shot the way I want it.
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I also barely upload uncropped pictures, but by now I do not worry too much about picture quality anymore (coming from aesthetical photography this also took me a while) … but I do crop almost all pictures to allow the IDers to focus an whats important, scale down pictures to use less data space and crop out unimportant stuff that is not necessary to understand the observation
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It’s more like - adhd brain won’t let me not do all that. :) Nothing to do with playing to an audience.
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I check all my notifications (with my current low observation output, I’m still in the “Woohoo! Notifications!” phase). I have them set to just disagreeing, but the ones for my observations are mainly refined IDs - family to genus, or species to subspecies - with a few actual disagreements thrown in. Depending on what mood I’m in, I’ll just scan the notification popups for anything interesting, or revisit each individual observation. I always check the observation if there are comments.
Other than that, I check my Explore: Your Observations page often to see how my observation and species counts are doing. Sometimes I just feel like looking through my older observations, so I’ll set the filters to Ascending or Random, Research Grade, or a specific taxon like Birds or Amphibians, and just scroll through them.
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I noticed that one of my moth observations sat untouched for as long as it was just identified as “Lepidoptera”; but when I went back and narrowed it down to Larentiinae, the very next day it was added to the “Moths of California” project. I don’t see the point of letting your observations languish when a little more effort could add value to them.
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Yes, I think that is a good idea! Most of the stuff I shoot is close to me and it’s pretty easy to fill the frame but there are times it’s best to crop an image out of a busy photo and I try but still skip it sometimes thinking I’ll get to it later.
I’m trying to cut my number of Needs ID down by reaching out to experts on them-- ideally I’d like to keep the number at zero, but realistically I think at or under 10% (so currently, 30 observations) of my obs should be needs ID.
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Interesting take. I have to admit that I had this kind of sentiment as well in the beginning… also I was aiming to not have multiple observations of one species ( I can´t remember why actually) and only upload high quality pictures (coming from a photography angle into this).
It did frustrate me quite a bit when my observations would not reach RG.
By now, I let most of those expectations slide and iNat is much more relaxing for me :-)
Otherwise observing in the South Americas would only frustrate me all the time, as e.g. my observations from 2019 (Ecuador) are now after 3 years at 47,39% RG (yeaha, almost every second IDed now) and the ones form last year (Colombia) are at 28,79% RG.
And what a pitty it would be to be frustrated by the wealth of observations one is able to make there, only because it is hard to ID them. I focus now on admiring nature more and do not worry about whether it will be able to reach RG and I am stoked if some specimen is IDed years after upload.
That said, I still enjoy the green RG banner a lot, it is satisfying… and I will go through my older observations from certain places from time to time to see, if maybe the CV can help me out now to narrow it down and finding the right experts to ask for help. Maybe it should be my goal this year to push thos 2019-observations to 50% RG ;-)
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Realistically you can’t keep that low amount of needs id unless you have a few observations or upload strictly only what you know (and have an expert to confirm). From personal experience aout 25% stays in need of id after a year of upload, and stays that way, in areas where expert community is low, I’m afraid 50+% will stay unided.
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My USA observations (almost 7,000 verifiable) are 43.2% RG.
Plants 45.7%
Animals 43.4%
Fungi 7% = 7/99
In 2023, I’m going to focus more on photo quality
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/120462935 vs https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/145763147
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I’ve come to think of my observations as having a life of their own once uploaded, a life independent of me. I don’t really worry about whether they get identified or reach RG. I move on to other photos and other issues.
Understand: I do watch my notifications and respond if an identification should be changed or a question answered. But other than that, what happens (or doesn’t) is just what happens (or not).
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My plant obs are 80% RG and I’m still complaining that they’re not ided enough, need to change my point of view on that.
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I know I’m in the minority but I keep my uploads few and restricted to things I know the species ID of and on top of that are species that don’t have many or any records in the area or state. And I avoid multiples whenever possible unless it’s an at-risk or rare species. I absolutely babysit all of my observations - I probably return to them multiple times a day! I realize this is definitely not how most people do things nor am I saying it’s a better way, just how I do it. Going through my thousands of photos for a handful of good shots takes not just hours but days, weeks (I’m still behind by a year or more for some sets of pictures). I crop, brighten, watermark, and run through keys before posting. I don’t post my photos anywhere else apart from BugGuide and in my own publications so this is, to me, where my photos need to look their best and represent my skill.
Currently the only things I have that aren’t RG are mushrooms and some galls (I think I’m at around 75% RG), which I realize may never happen, but seeing things not get RG is so disheartening to me (esp after the work I put in both in the field to get decent and relevant pictures, and prior to posting) that I avoid posting most things that probably won’t be ID’d. Part of it is also trying to learn how to ID various taxa and if my observations get no feedback or corrections then I’m stuck just not knowing if I was wrong or not, after I tried my best to ID. I realize sometimes that comes down to a lack of experts for some taxa.
Big kudos to those who can upload hundreds of photos in a single sitting, and who don’t mind non-RG observations, but I’m afraid I could never be that! 
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I can relate. This is why I asked in another thread, Is it useful to write out my identification steps? – and, well, you can see what I marked as the solution. It is disheartening. Very disheartening.
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But if they don’t become RG in a wek it doesn’t mean someone won’t id them in 3 years? Upload everything you are sure can be ided, don’t upload something that will stay at family level, and you will get your high percentage if you will stop uploading one day. What is disheartening is a knowledge of all the observations iNat could have because of the choice you made, think from that side.
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Actually, yes, for the most part that seems to hold true. The flood of new observations push it so far back that nobody looks at it if it has been more than a couple of days.
I usually check iNat frequently (sometimes 2-3 times a day) and then I see updates. If I have a new interest or identification skill for a group I go back through all of mine and identify them. So, a lot. I attend to them a fair amount.
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I think this may be a bit dependent on location and taxa. I agree that some of my older observations may never get IDed. But I receive and provide IDs for observations that are several years old. In particular, as I am learning a new taxon and gain confidence, I go through the full date range of observations for the area I am focusing on.
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