I’ll be giving a talk at the Monte Vista Crane Festival in a few weeks, specifically pitching iNat to the wildlife photographers who will be there. I personally got into wildlife photography because I was using iNat, so my experience is a bit different from what I’m asking from these folks.
If you were a wildlife photographer hobbyist before you started using iNat, I’d love to know what it was that got you started posting your photos to iNat, what was difficult or confusing, and what reservations you had (if any) about posting your photos here. That would really help me with my talk. Thanks!
Not sure if this is helpful, but I got into wildlife photography and iNaturalist in tandem.
I started by taking photos with my phone through my binoculars and loved the crisp shots of animals I was never able to see up close before. I initially sent photos to my friends/family, but I wanted a better way to catalogue my photos despite the fact I do not use typical social media (Facebook, Instagram, etc.).
As an environmental science student I had already used Seek to help with plant identification on my hikes, so I had heard the iNaturalist name. It seemed like a great place to catalogue my photos: able to upload multiple in an observation, keep track of species/date/place, and get feedback from other people. In turn I got into more advanced photography gear, and started using iNaturalist more regularly. iNaturalist was a great way to find hotspots for where a specific species may be, look at photos other people have taken, and practice my identification skills.
Advanced wildlife photographers may already have some of these needs filled, but I think these are all great aspects to pitch. Hope this helps, good luck!
Not a photographer (exhibit A: my Observations), but time and again the limitations of the Forum have been emphasized, so perhaps this will be useful.
If one goes to a higher rank info page, say “serpents”, and looks at the grouping of photos, many will be from self-identified wildlife photographers. (As someone who frequently uploads her own Observations at high ranks, I have noticed this.)
I would say lizards, snakes, maybe owls and parrots?… these and others are likely to bear photographer fruit, should you wish to send targeted messages.
Before joining iNat, I did quite a lot of bird photography. A relative had mentioned iNat to me, but I didn’t really see any reason to sign up. I could usually ID the birds well enough with my field guides, so it didn’t feel necessary.
In 2024, I started experimenting with macro photography, and pretty soon I was spending most of my free time doing that. By 2025, I finally had to admit I couldn’t identify most of what I was photographing, so I joined iNat.
Honestly, I didn’t find the site all that hard to navigate, and the people were friendly right from the start. Since then, I’ve drifted away from birds and the larger arthropods I used to focus on—these days I spend most of my time on springtails.
In terms of “showing” my photo work, I find that many non-naturalists tend to be interested in charismatic megafauna and little else. While I’m a generalist, I’m often observing and photographing small, cryptic organisms because that’s what I’m interested in and I can do that anywhere - it doesn’t have to be an “exotic” location. Inat is one of the few places I can post of pic of a polychaete worm or hydroid, etc.. where at least someone’s going to be as excited about it as I am!
I also benefit from inat for all the same reasons that any other user does. I can connect with experts in their field about what I’m observing and learning about. I get to see what other people are observing in the same areas that I frequent and so on…
My only past and ongoing reservation about posting photos is if they’ll be used in ways that are against my copyright wishes, though overwhelmingly the native user base here has been respectful of that.
I started with wildlife photography a long time ago. To capture a good photograph, I often had to study animal behavior. I realized that a photo intended for species identification requires something different. It calls for specific preparation. What should be in focus to make identification possible? That’s the challenge.
I like to capture characteristic behavior and moments that reveal the species—for example, laying eggs on a host plant, feeding, and similar activities. Frequent encounters with endangered habitats, along with my experience with rare species, motivate me to invest more and more effort into the observations I upload to iNaturalist.
I was a wildlife photographer long before joining iNat. https://wildlifephotos.myportfolio.com/ My reasons for joining were twofold: (1) To help identify species I was unsure of, and (2) Because the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife has a presence here in gathering information of both flora and fauna,
I never thought the site was particularly difficult to navigate or use. As with all software, it has its quirks.
My only hesitation in joining the site was in revealing locations of particularly sensitive plants and animals to a large audience for reasons I’m sure you can understand. My answer to that is to obscure those locations where I feel it necessary.
I was talking with my biology teacher about an bug(acrogonia sp., but i din’t know at the time) i founded in my backyard and i asked if he knew something. Then he said: “why dont you use Inaturalist” and i was like: what is Inaturalist?
The only difficulty i had with the site was learnig how to include more than one photo in one observation, but i think it was just desation of mine.
P.S.:Despite my teacher knowing about Inat, he didn’t use until recentily. Acording to him, i “addicted” him in the website- i just don’t know how.
P.S.2:About reservations: when is close to my home, i use an broder accuracy.
I started using iNat to help with IDs. While a great resource in identifying species in specific locations, I was somewhat frustrated by the lack of clear ID photos. I started adding photos slowly and as I became convinced of the value and the ease of contributing I went all in. I do have some concern over putting my photos on such a public forum. That said, I am getting quite a few requests to reprint/reuse photos - good on all of them for respecting copyright. I’m not doing much with them, so I’m happy to see others being able to use them for ID or research purposes.
For a long time I had an online community where I could share my love for nature mainly via arthistical photos and exchange about them. I had another community help learn to ID what I observed.
One main thing drove me away from those communities and to iNat in the end - I moved to another continent and lost touch to one community that was focussed on nature photography in our backyards and mine just became to exotic.. and the other was of little help anymore in IDing
So I was lost on all fronts. I tried different photo sharing opportunities, but they quickly became to boring for me. I never was just interested in only presenting my photos for the praise. And I hate the idea to take hundreds of photos just to sit on my hard-drive.
I wanted to learn while photographing, so I needed a possibility to ID what I saw to learn more. And I wanted to help others learn as well. Through my own photos or their own by helping to ID. And I like the idea that my photos now serve a purpose… lots ( esp. of my older ones, as nowadays I rarely do “nice” photos) have been used on publications or guides or homepages and Wikipedia and that’s amazing. They would have been long forgotten by now sitting on my computer.
I found iNat to be rather intuitive to use.. I did have experience with a similar but local site years before that was to frustrating to use for me, so it did not stick.
I think for many photographers the licensing possibilities here would be most interesting to know and to maybe eliminate some fears they have about their photos
I became active for couple reasons: to get identifications, to appreciate the diversity, and to see what others seeing, where and when. My early focus was on nudibranch. At the time (and still), the expert community around them was relatively small. While there were FB groups, it was difficult to see broader patterns or build a coherent picture. One of the specialists I knew was and is still very active on iNat as a curator, which provided additional incentive to engage on the platform.
Over time, I realised that images of other taxa - cnidarians, ascidians, porifera and so on - were also useful and appreciated on iNat. The platform also taught me that identification photography requires a different set of skills and priorities e.g. frontal macro shots against a black background may perform well in underwater photography competitions, but they often provide limited value for identification. On iNat, habitat context and diagnostic angles are frequently far more informative.
That said, I have long been into photography, nature, and pattern as a hobby, so my experience may not fully resonate with the broader community. These days, I upload any wildlife, both underwater and above water.
I know a number of peers who are aware of iNat but choose not to engage because they perceive it as too time-consuming. Many of them have extensive image archives, and feel a need to accurately represent their body of work rather than start only with recent observations.
For many years I had photographed things hoping to be able to later ID them. Initially I shared most of my “good enough” photos with names of the species on Instagram with repost to facebook.
Before using Inat, I know the department I work for (Department of Conservation NZ) encouraged people seeking IDs to use inaturalist as we dont have the resources to ID everything for everyone. Though I always enjoyed trying to help people with IDs. Though people werent seeking them that often. Then I found this spider which stumped me.
So tried inat to see how it would go. I managed to get an ID which was cool. It was another year and a half before I used it again. It was cool, but I had pretty much been used to doing everything for myself. But then I started getting into it as a way to keep count of the species I see. From there it kind of became a challege to find more species. I wouldnt say the initial experience had friction, as much as I just hadnt grasped how useful it is. Now I share Inat with visitors to my park often multiple times a day.
I’m not quite sure I’m in the demographic you’re asking about, but here goes anyway just in case it’s useful. When I started on iNat I was a keen generalist photographer. I often took wildlife shots as a subject of interest, but I didn’t specialise in anything.
I joined iNat back in 2017 because of a single spider that I encountered whilst on holiday in France, a Lobed Argiope. I’d never seen anything quite like it at the time, nor sadly, since. You can see my excitement at photographing this spider because it is captured in my profile picture.
On returning home, I was keen to find out what the interesting creature I’d seen was. I searched on the internet (presumably Google) and iNat came up. I’d never heard of it before. I uploaded a photo and selected the suggested ID, my first ever iNat observation: https://uk.inaturalist.org/observations/7952917
TBH, I don’t think I ever really expected much more, but the next day I received a notification saying someone had identified my spider and it was now Research Grade. I didn’t really know what that meant, but I was impressed. A week or so later I uploaded some more photos, more stuff got identified. Gradually I got hooked and I love it. Now, I post most days and always look to see what others have posted, regardless of my own activity. I’ve learnt a lot and have changed my photographic habits considerably. I photograph a lot less non-nature now because I’ve become so interested in the natural world.
I don’t remember ever having any concerns or problems with iNat in those early days. It always did what I wanted and continues to do so. Nowadays I use it to catalogue all the wildlife I see. I love that I can be anywhere in the world and can instantly find all of my photos from any given species, together with details of when and where I’d taken them and any notes and discussions about them. I also use it to help find stuff that I’ve not seen, but want to. I find it a fantastic resource and really easy to use. Thank you!
I fell in love with hobby wildlife photography after getting a camera in my supplies list in college, eventually finding a love for birds specifically. What got me into iNaturalist though was actually through work. While my actual job is as a graphic designer for an environmental monitoring company, I also am part of the naturalist team at this job, with one of my main tasks in that role being an educator as well as documenting/photographing every species of flora and fauna I can find at our field station.
While I can’t remember HOW I found iNaturalist, this documentation effort is what led me to join iNat since, while I am proficient in bird ID, I am not familiar with many of the plants, insects, fungi, etc. that call the field station home. iNaturalist since has helped me ID and document over 500 unique species (and counting) at that one location. Using it for that purpose has led me to use it for documenting my hobby wildlife photography as well, in addition to helping ID other users’ observations.
Again, thank you all to the folks talking their time to share here.
One pitch I often use is that your photos could be used for research and conservation, so photographers would potentially be contributing to the conservation of the species/places they enjoy photographing, unlike Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, etc. I didn’t see that mentioned much here, which surprised me, but maybe it’s just not as immediately salient as the ID help, interaction with others, record keeping, etc?
Yes, I plan to include at least some of it. RIP Greg.
I started out 3 years ago with just using seek to identify any animal I came across. In November I got really into wildlife photography (I’ve been doing photography for years beforehand) so I began getting more and more excited about documenting species so I started posting my observations to Inat which helped me get better at identifying species and it got me more motivated to go out to take pictures.