I hope members and visitors are enjoying the greater impact of the new, larger image size on BLP. I certainly am.

Another positive of the new size is the ability to show birds smaller in the frame, with more surrounding environment while still being able to show the subject bird or birds at a reasonable size with good detail and features visible. It's worth thinking about when you prepare your photos and doing this if the frame will allow it and the surrounding are adding to the photo rather than detracting. I know with the smaller size we used to have, I would sometimes go for a bird larger in the frame to show good detail on it but I don't have to worry about that so much now.

A 'minus' with the new size is that it will magnify any deficiencies and problems with the photo like poor focus, digital noise etc. Related to this, it also means that cropping hard is going to be more difficult if quality is to be retained when posting at the larger size. Even though we encourage members to post at the largest size possible, it's worth rethinking this if the quality of the shot won't suit this. You can still post shots at smaller size and we'll happily accept them. There may be some confusion about what the new minimum means: as long as the shot is at least 1400 pixels on the longest side, it's fine. It can be smaller than 1400 pixels on the other side as long as one dimension is at least 1400.

Hope that helps you all get the most out of this great improvement to our site.

Is there a post outlining all the photo posting rules?
Could it be made a sticky?
Thanks.

Look under Photo Galleries, Competitions, Current Competition Rules. I think you will find what you are after there.

I find the simplest way is to actually go to 'Submit Photo' under Photo Gallery. As soon as you select a different gallery from the relevant dropdown box, it will show the permitted sizes for that gallery. The general rule is maximum 1800 pixels high or wide; minimum 1400 on the longest side and maximum file size 2,500 KB. The only exceptions are 1) Advanced competition where the image *must* be exactly 1800 pixels on the longest side; 2) the Landscape/Habitat gallery which has a different minimum size (based on BirdLife's usage requirements) Min height 995 pixels, Min width 1680 pixels; and 3) the Slides gallery which displays images on the top of some of our website pages and has a fixed size requirement of 1400 pixels wide x 450 high and file size of 1,000 KB

Many thanks.