Know what you're asking for
If you want critique, say what you think is off and what you were going for. "Thoughts?" on its own won't get you much.
If you're sharing what you learned, put the weight on the process: how you found it, how long you waited, what the conditions were, how many times it didn't work.
If you're just showing the picture, skip the essay. One accurate line and the full settings, and let the image do the rest.
Make titles specific
"Serenity", "Moments" and "Encounter" can't be searched and say nothing. A good title usually has two of three things: where, when, and under what conditions.
| Instead of | Try | Why |
|---|---|---|
| "Dawn" | Ridge viewpoint, blue hour 20 minutes before sunrise | Place, time and light are all there, so someone else can go |
| "Just a snap" | Ten minutes of rare visibility after the rain cleared | Says why this frame was hard to get |
| "Thoughts?" | Trying to tame the messy branches bottom right, three positions so far | A specific question gets a specific answer |
Titles don't need to be long. Just don't spend your one line of information on an adjective.
Share settings someone could repeat
Camera, lens, focal length, aperture, shutter, ISO and time are all in your EXIF. It isn't fussy to include them. They're the only way anyone can tell how you got the shot. Put them in the caption or print them on the border. Mark reads the EXIF and makes a settings watermark for you, and the photo stays in your browser.
More useful than the numbers are the decisions behind them. Why f/11 and not f/5.6? Why push to ISO 1600? One sentence of reasoning is worth ten lines of figures.
How precise to be about location
Location is the most valuable thing a community shares, and the thing most likely to cause harm.
- Public places that can take the traffic, such as city viewpoints and established trails, are fine to describe exactly, down to the spot and direction.
- For undeveloped alpine meadow, untouched wetland or dangerous cliff edges, give the region or county. One exact coordinate can wreck a place within months.
- For private land or places that need a permit, write "contact first", even if you had permission.
- For risky places, mention tides, rockfall and ice. That matters more than coordinates.
Privacy
Phones and some cameras write exact GPS coordinates into EXIF. If you shot your home, your child's school or somewhere you go often, strip the location before you post.
Zoom in on the background once more. House numbers, number plates, parcel labels, ID badges, a chat window on a screen.
If a stranger can be recognised, especially a child, think about whether you have consent, and the bar is higher for commercial use. If someone asks you to take it down, do it without fuss. With drones over homes, don't make someone's yard or balcony the subject.
Copyright
Posting your work usually means licensing the platform to show it, not giving up your copyright. Check what the terms say about the scope of that licence. A watermark works as a credit, but not if it ruins the picture.
Don't paste other people's photos into your post as reference. Link to them instead, which is safer and more polite. Derivative work, collages and feeding someone's photos to a model can all infringe, and the rules vary by place, so be careful.
A few basic manners
- When you critique, say which part you mean before you suggest anything. "The composition is off" helps nobody.
- Don't post your own photo in someone's thread as a lesson unless they asked.
- If someone asks whether it's AI-generated or heavily composited, say what you did. Honesty is less work than defending.
- Split a set across several posts. Thirty at once and nobody remembers any of them.
- If you see a dangerous spot being passed around, say something instead of sharing it on.
In LCT
The LCT community exists so you can see how others shot the same place: work from one location sits together, with the vantage point, time and settings visible. Images and text are stored separately, uploads have a size cap, and there's a built-in term filter and moderation.
What you post is used only to show and moderate it, never to train models. If that ever changes, we'll ask for your consent first and update the privacy policy. The community isn't open in this release. To hear when it opens, send us an email.
Three minutes before you post
- Does the title have two of where, when and conditions?
- Are the settings complete, with a line on why you chose them?
- How precise is the location, and can the place handle lots of visitors?
- Should the GPS come out of the EXIF? Is anything in the background that shouldn't be?
- Are there strangers in the frame, and did they agree?
- Did you use anyone else's material, and is the credit and licence clear?