CNP's Image Posting Guidelines - Last edit June 2008.

Posting Guidelines may be boring to read but it is important to read them to comply and keep the spirit and purpose of the forum. Here in our forums, we have a very narrow focus on what kind of images are appropriate. We are trying our best to make this an interesting reading for you. Not reading this however may result in in-appropriate postings or review comments which may need further moderation by forum moderators. Please take a few minutes to read through.

Most important guideline

0. Your own all copyrights to your posted content

Please make sure you own all copyrights to any content (images, your views in terms of discussions, articles etc) you upload to CNP. Please go through our Terms of Use before using this web site. Please limit self promotion to a link or two in your signature (under user profile setting). Please restrict all your discussions to creative nature photography.

1. The image you post has to be creative, original or different and it is an image of a subject in nature.

The images of man made subjects or captive animals are not appropriate. While conservation and related issues are important it is outside the scope of CNP. The scope of CNP is restricted to creative aspects of nature photography only.

What is creative ? - it is difficult to agree up on a definition. Nevertheless we have tried attempting at describing what is creative by stating some exclusions. Please go through the What is Creative ? section below - for all you know you may enjoy reading it !

2. No Photoshop manipulations

No digital manipulations in editing tools like photoshop but for minor dusting, levels, sharp/blur, brightness/contrast/curves. Minor cloning work may be ok as long as you state them in your post. Limited dodging/burning to overcome limitations of recording medium is ok - helps if you state them. We don't emphasis on "nature as is" representations in images posted here - which we think is counter productive to creative visions. So, blurred, under exposed, over exposed among other creative possibilities are just fine. We don't encourage photoshop manipulations since there are so many filters within PS which help anyone create unusual and different looking effects which is only a matter of days to pickup and realize everyone can do it and it may not be as creative.

We do believe creativity cannot be programmed.

3. Image size and dimension restriction

All images need to be maximum 300KB in size and shouldn't exceed 800 pixels on its longer side. The restriction on pixel dimension is due to the fact that larger than 800 pixels images may not get formatted properly due to chosen layouts.

4. Follow Nature Photography Ethics

Please take extreme caution in making images of nesting birds and other subjects in nature. Please make sure your presence and actions don't affect them in anyway. We are sure our viewers are not interested in seeing painful images of nature even though they appear creative. Try to make images by keeping subject's interest as top priority.

5. Please restrict your postings to one image for every 24 hours.

We don't intend to flood our database with many images and there by resulting in limited visibility to quality images posted by an individual. So with the view of providing equal opportunity to all we restrict posting of one image per person for every 24 hours.

6. Trust and Respect

It is important we trust and respect fellow forum members. We critique images and not those who made them. Improvement suggestions becomes more credible when we make it a habit to recognize what is good. Whilst you post your images, please be prepared to accept and treat positive criticisms regarding strengths as well as improvement areas equally. Further, single word/line feedbacks like "oh", "wow", "I like it", "wish this were mine", "I don't think this works for me" may not very be useful. Our focus is clearly not on bumping the feedback counters. The poster may want to know what aspects you liked and what you didn't. Providing a good critique is a skill by itself. You may want to use this forum to develop that skill.

The vision behind CNP is a platform to share creative unique images. To meet this we may need to periodically do pruning of some images which users CNP think not very creative. This is to keep CNP consistent with its vision.

What is creative ?

This is a forum for Creative Nature Photography. The key word here is creative or original or something different. The image need not be outstanding but photographer's attempt at seeing nature around him/her in a original way should be very evident from the posted image. CNP's survival as a forum will depend on this sole vision. Keeping this in mind let see what is creative and what is not, the kind of images are allowed and those that are not appropriate here. It is easier to talk about what is not creative. Let us first talk about those images which are not appropriate in these forums and then spend some time going through a few examples of images which (we think) are creative and different.

What is not appropriate at CNP ?

Routine compositions like bird-on-a-stick (even if it is an image of a newly discovered species), eye-level shot of a wading bird, typical sunsets/sunrises images, routine macro portraits (typical butterflies, dragon flies) showing fine details are not appropriate in our forum. Sure they look beautiful but we are looking for creative work even if it slightly falls short. We prefer to see an attempt at creativity than similar looking beautiful portraits. For example below four images are not appropriate in our gallery for the reasons stated below. The focus is clearly on the person behind the camera and lens and not on the subject or tools.



This is an image of a rare bird named Striated Grass Bird. Other than the fact the image is of a rare species there is nothing creative about it - so we don't encourage posting rare species images here just because they are rare. If they meet our creativity guidelines sure please do post them. Again we are not at all saying we don't value them, it is just that they are not within our creativity scope.



The image of the kestrel above is a typical example of a "bird-on-stick". Nothing wrong with them but nothing creative either. A person who could afford a 500mm f4 or 600mm f4 lens will start making these kind of images very soon. These images are fast forgotten too. It is just a matter of being able to afford a long tele lens (tool).

The image of the stilt above is similar one. In any bird photography book we can find a paragraph mentioning importance of ground level shots. These are some common perspectives.



A similar image in macro world - routine scientific rules - fine close up details, right focal plane to render maximum sharpness etc. A typical macro if we can call so.

The photographer's efforts at creating something original is hard to recognize in these images. See this gallery for more such images to get a feel for what is not appropriate for CNP.

The summary being - We are looking for images where we can easily see photographers' vision beyond the tools used (fast cameras, 8-10fps, long lens enabling close portraits, tripod, sophisticated ball head, etc).

What is appropriate then ? What is creative ?

These are tough questions to answer! But hold on, while we can't provide you with an agreeable useful definition for "creative images" we strongly believe it is relatively easy to recognize when one posts such images - interesting, isn't it? Let us see some of those images here.



What do you think ? Isn't this an expression of how the photographer has seen it raining ? Does it matter what tools he has used ? What do you think the odds are if two different nature photographers sitting together and making this same image ? Clearly this image meets our originality guideline.



Here is an image where photographer very successfully transformed an ordinary flight of a flock of birds to something viewers will ponder on.



This is an interesting perspective where in photographer has visualized the foreground and sky in water differently.



In this image above photographer has very creatively played with size, light, expanse of water to create a beautiful feel and mood.

These images clearly are results of those behind camera - the art of seeing differently is very evident in these creations. None of them are due to capability of expensive cameras or lenses. It is these kind of original visualizations that we want to see here. All posted images need not be excellent, for example an image below is an attempt at seeing things differently. Though not as good, it meets CNP guidelines since there is an attempt at seeing things differently.



We hope by now you have an idea of what meets CNP guidelines. To simplify this further we have a gallery which shows a few more examples of What is not creative.

That's all for now. Thanks so much for your patience. This is your forum ! Hope you will enjoy it.

You may want to refer to our FAQs to read more about why we made some of these decisions.


You can also rate images in the scale of 1-10. Please visit this link to read more about our suggestions to rate an image.

You may contact CNP administration directly at .



- CNP Editorial Team.