Submission Guidelines

1. To make a submission, you will first need to register, which you will find right at the top of the sidebar.  That is also where you can log in when you return.  If you lose or forget your password, we can’t retrieve it for you – use the password retrieval that is right by the sign in area. Even if you are registered as a contributor on DessertStalking, you need to do so here as well. You are welcome to use the same ID on both sites.

2. The photo should depict something that is connected to gardening, and must be linked to a post on a blog.  We want to include all kinds of gardens – ornamental, edible, organic, private, public.  There is a bit more detail on the FAQ page.

3. To be usable, photos must be cropped to a square and sized at 250 pixels by 250 pixels.  Photos should not be watermarked.  Not allowing watermarked photos is standard for food-related aggregation sites, but seems to be causing some concerns among garden bloggers, so I will elaborate the reasoning more fully:  The number one reason is simple aesthetics.  A whole page of little photos with watermarks is not going to be very visually appealing.  This site, and others like it are all about visual appeal.  The number two reason is that a 250px by 250px photo is not very likely to be stolen in the first place, because it is simply not very useful.  Number 3, unless you have a registered, embedded watermark, anyone with decent editing software can whisk  that watermark right off of your photo in no time at all.

4. Remember – the photo must be in the blog post you submit with it. Please submit just one photo from any one post, though if a submission can’t used for some reason, you are welcome to try a different photo, so long as it too, appears in the post. Write an interesting description. Your description should make people want to come to your blog to read more, as well as to see more of your photos and other content. It can’t be longer than 140 characters though. The title is limited to 35 characters.  If the description or title don’t fit in the text box, we can’t make it fit either, so edit yourself accordingly.

5. What determines which submissions are accepted and which are not? Here are my criteria: If I like the photo, and the link leads where it is supposed to, I’ll publish it. I am unashamedly subjective, and really to claim otherwise would be silly, because what other standard can I possibly use?  The quality of the photo is going to be pretty important because if we don’t have good photos, visitors will not return to GardenStalking, which means they won’t be clicking along to your blog either. No flash photography is likely to be accepted, and bright sunlight can cause the same problems on a photo as a flash.  Underexposure and blurriness are also going to cause a photo to be rejected.  I will let you know exactly what the trouble is with a photo we don’t accept, and I am always willing to offer tips on taking better photos that will be accepted.

5. Please limit your submissions to just a couple a day at most.  As noted in the FAQ, we won’t typically have multiple submissions from the same blog on the front page, so if you submit two photos and you only get feedback on one of them, just wait a few days, and we will moderate the other photo.

6. Don’t steal. Please only submit photos that belong to you, or that you have permission to post. If you see your photo here, and you didn’t submit it, or aren’t properly credited, email me immediately at stalkingsites@gmail.com, and I will remove it, along with slapping the paw of whoever submitted it. You get one “mistake” – get caught posting someone else’s photo a second time and you’ll be banned. So, if you didn’t take the photo yourself, make sure you have permission.