Everyone desires to be a socially useful person, even those of us in the arts and humanities, but especially those who have entered retirement too. Taking part in iNaturalist has been extremely educational and rewarding. My choice of participation has been to use a camera. Often real scientists are a little leery of us, with good reason.

While I am learning new things about how to contribute to this particular website everyday. Some things that I found particularly useful were:
1) watching the video about Greg Lasley, amateur photography turned pro, who contributed to iNaturalist. This was very helpful in educating me about what scientists expect to get from photographs, sound bits, and other observations by citizen scientists;
2) reading explanations by botanists, fisheries experts, etc about what they need visual evidences to show;
3) study the observations by others in iNaturalist and other sites and learn to compare.

Most of all, I enjoy being outdoors! And I enjoy using my cameras.

FotoJunkie8

Posted on August 15, 2021 12:18 AM by mandarinduck008