Bulk Observation Photo Uploading Procedure

Uploading batched observations! Apologies if this comes across as totally obvious or too long.

Say you’ve been out traveling and can’t timely upload your pix using your iPhone, or there’s no internet there, or can’t download from your fancy digital camera. To do batch uploads you must first download pix to your PC. Then go to iNaturalist on your PC. This is what folks have done, when you see they’ve just loaded up 50 observations in a matter of a few minutes! Metadata from your phone’s photos are uploaded automatically.

1. Log into iNaturalist on your computer. I make a temp folder in my Downloads folder, then download the photos from my phone using it as an external drive plugged into a USB port. But you can do it however you like to do it. Just be sure all your photos are downloaded.
2. One issue I’ve discovered is that a few photos will download in some weird and unusable format. It’s worth double-checking to ensure all your photos are in fact uploaded, that some are not “thought of” by your PC as “corrupted”. These ones I’ll have to email to myself from the phone and download that way.
   
3. Click “Upload” = top right green arrow button
4. Click “Choose files” = big blue button center of screen.
5. Find the folder containing your photos
6. Select all the photos you want to upload and click “Open”.
   

7. All your photos are now uploaded, each one a separate observation. Now, to combine the ones that belong together in the same observation.
   a. Using drag-and-drop, combine your multiple photos per observation, dragging each one onto the one you want as the Default primary photo.
   b. Note the 1st observation now shows a ¼ or 2/3 etc in the center; see right left arrows at the sides to scroll through them to confirm they are the right ones!

8. Now, click on the “Species Name” box and let it load suggestions. Do your best to identify to some level. Never select “Unknown”. Is it safe to assume that you will know if it’s an insect or fungus or plant?

9. Add any notes to the Notes box.
   a. In the case of mushrooms and what not, these can be important characteristics to include, such as “growing on oak stump”.
   b. I’ll include geographic information such as “St. Marks Headwaters Greenway”, which is more specific than “Leon County” that’s selected by default when iNat cannot find a more specific “Place”. Simply copy & paste that note into all the other observations made there.

10. When all done, review and click “Submit ## observations”, top right below your name!
11. Now, your observations will be uploaded using today’s date, with the actual date of the observation included in the middle of the list. The mobile look will be quite different from the PC, of course.
    

Posted on April 25, 2023 01:26 PM by ingolfaskevold