Photohunting for Wikimedia/Introduction

"Photohunting" is the deliberate seeking-out of photographic opportunities, wherever they may present themselves. When taking pictures for Wikimedia, we are taking pictures for one of two reasons:

1. Adding a photo to Wikimedia Commons in general, as part of its mission as a photographic repository
2. Depicting a specific item (a person, a place, an object, etc.) associated with a Wikidata page. We'll get more into Wikidata in a later section, but for right now, all we need to know is that all Wikipedia pages have a Wikidata page, but not all Wikidata pages have Wikipedia pages.

While a professional camera is definitely an asset to taking photos for Wikimedia, it is not a requirement. Most of my photos were taken with iPhones, and that's still my go-to piece of photographic equipment. Why? Because:

• It's smaller and thus more mobile,
• I don't stand out as much taking photos with my phone as I do with my professional camera
• The file sizes are smaller – on Wikimedia, we don't need insanely-high pixel counts for photos to serve their purpose, and in fact, that helps ease the load on storage
• It's easy to add geolocation data to the photos (though you can do this with more recent pro cameras, as well), which can help from a data standpoint

{when it does and doesn't come in handy (mention WikiShootMe), why it's important to consider}

{JPEGs vs. PNGs, why JPEGs are preferred, make sure your camera can take JPEGs, back-up PNG option (screenshot, if needed), missing geolocation data if you convert to JPEG using a website}

WikiShootMe