Photography Tips for Better Plant Identification

Do you use iNaturalist? or Facebook groups to get plant identifications?

Maybe you are best mates with a botanist and you see a really cool plant and want to know what it is, so you send them a photo and say

Friend: Who dis?

Botanist Mate: I dunno, because the photo is blurry and it looks like you took it from a moving car. What did it look like?

Friend: It was green, and it had big leaves, and I think there were some yellow flowers.

Botanist Mate: What shape were the leaves? How big were they? Were they smooth on the edges? Did it have fleshy fruit like a berry or tiny little woody looking capsules, or something completely different? Was it tiny like and ant? Was it growing in a bog or in a forest? Was it tall and robust or was it a climber?

Friend: Oh… I dunno…

Botanist Mate: I got nothing then… but hey, next time, grab a few more photos and I reckon I can help you… This will give you some tips on which bits to photo… But the more the merrier, and the more likely you will get an accurate ID!

(p.s. – I did this in a hurry and I was going to just print it out as a flyer, but then decided why waste the paper because we all just chuck it out anyway… However I do plan on improving this, better quality images, make it easier to view on a mobile phone, maybe making it so you can print it out if you so desire… I am also playing around with this idea that it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be done, as opposed to, it doesn’t need to be done, it just needs to be perfect…)