IMPORTANT NOTICE:  On March 26th, Yahoo changed the way that its group pages are organized.  Photographs can no longer be displayed on TalkingDC's home page.  TalkingDC Citizen Photjournalism project is being moved to another, but perhaps more versitile, location:  A Team Citizen Photojournalism blog, http://dcphotonews.blogspot.com/. 

The information on this website will be updated soon, but in the meanwhile, if you are interested in contributing newsworthy photographs, please email me at:

 

 

 

Sincerely,

Bill Adler

 

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If you see news or something interesting or fun going on in Washington, DC and vicinity, you can send that photo to TalkingDC, where it will be instantly displayed on the TalkingDC Listeserv's home page, www.talkingdc.com.  There are thousands of cellphone cameras in the Washington, DC area and lots of news, so chances are very good that when news happens, a citizen journalist will be there with his or her cellphone camera.

In order to be able to submit photos instantly, you must first register as a TalkingDC citizen photojournalist:  Only photos from pre-approved cell phone numbers are automatically uploaded.  To register, contact the TalkingDC owner via www.talkingdc.com or shoot us an email at: 

 

 

If you see breaking news you can still send in a photo without preregistering (your photo will be delayed until a real human can review it.)  Just email your photograph to:

To submit a photo just email that photo as a JPG attachment to the email address above.  If you think you might be sending photos from more than one phone or from an alternate email address, let us know that that email address is.  Some volunteer photojournalists prefer to take photos with a digital camera and then email them:  While cellphone pictures arrive swiftly, digital camera photos are often of better quality.)  You can download a photojournalist wallet card so that you can carry this email address with you.

Now for the nitty-gritty of how to send us a photo:

  • Put the subject of your photograph in the email's subject line.  We know that's often hard with the tiny-tiny cellphone keys, but it's very helpful if people know what you've taken a picture of.  Don't type "Subject:"  Just include whatever you want as the subject line without the word "subject."
  • Put any additional descriptive information in the body of your message.  This is where you can include the words "Photo by _______."  The more information you include, the better.  It's a good idea to add where the photograph was taken, if you're able to peck out that information on your cell phone's keys.  (This is why having a smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard comes in handy.)  You can email us later if you forgot to include your photo credit, too, and we will add that for you.  You can also inset this HTML code, which will display your photo credit and include a link to your Flickr photostream (if you have one):

    <p>Photo credit: <a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/FLICKR NAME>YOUR NAME</a></p>

Cellphones aren't great cameras, but there are some things you can do to take better photos with your cellphone camera.  Here are some tips on taking better photos with your camera phone.

You should be able to view your photo on www.talkingdc.com within a few seconds after emailing it.  That's fast!  You can also post a message on the TalkingDC listserv further describing what your photo is about.  If you do that, please include a link to your photo in your message to the TalkingDC listserv.  You can find the direct link by just clicking on your own photo on www.talkingdc.com. You can read more about this on our FAQ.

When you submit your photo to TalkingDC, you are also giving permission to have it licensed by Creative Commons with an Attribution License.  An attribution license generally means that your photo can be distributed to news organizations and others, with credit. See http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons for more information about that. 

Photos may be deleted because of inappropriate content, because they are of poor quality (as sometimes happens with camera phones), or because the photo lacked a subject or needed descriptive information.  We may edit the photo's titles and descriptions for clarity, too.

You can read more about being a citizen photojournalist on our FAQ.  If you want the HTML code to display our citizen journalists' photos on your own website, click here.

 

The TinyURL for this page is http://tinyurl.com/ybocos

The Notlong URL for this page is http://photoj.notlong.com