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Earthcache Requirement


SeekerOfTheWay

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Posted

i'm planning in doing my first earthcache this week on my bday. It's pretty close to home but i've got a problem.

 

One requirement is to take a pic of my GPSr so that the coords are visible. Another is to have a pic of myself with the cache.

 

i use my BlackBerry as my GPSr and it has a camera (i take a lot of caching pics) but obviously i can't take a pic of my phone w my phone. And may not be able to take a pic of me with the cache if it's huge.

 

Any suggestions? i don't own a PC or camera and i cache alone. i don't want to buy anything either. Thanks for ideas.

Posted

E-mail the owner and explain your situation. I would expect that the owner will understand and accept the picture of you at the location.

 

You could always take a mirror with you :anicute:

Posted (edited)

you could always hold a mirror in front of you while taking the picture :anicute:

 

alternately send a message to the cache owner explaining your dilemma and ask for their suggestion what they will accept given your circumstances

 

lol TerryDad2, mirrored messages

Edited by t4e
Posted

You don't have to take a picture of yourself or the GPS. The current Earthcaching guidelines don't allow those as requirements anymore.

Sure they do....in certain situations...how bout this:

 

Photograph a fossil impression; include your GPS for the purposes of scale determination.

Posted

You don't have to take a picture of yourself or the GPS. The current Earthcaching guidelines don't allow those as requirements anymore.

Sure they do....in certain situations...how bout this:

 

Photograph a fossil impression; include your GPS for the purposes of scale determination.

 

I would hope that in that situation, a picture taken with something else, like a ruler, would also be acceptable. If the photo must contain the GPS, it's probably a sneaky attempt to circumvent the guidelines.

Posted

You don't have to take a picture of yourself or the GPS. The current Earthcaching guidelines don't allow those as requirements anymore.

And you are very correct narcissa. I did edit my EC's that only require a photo of the geographic feature of the EC, if any photo at all.

Posted

i think i will take a pic of my username with rock instead of GPSr. And maybe i can take a pic with my personal car TB and email that to the CO.

 

It's my first one so i really want it to count.

 

IMHO, the picture is to show the CO that you were there. Although its no longer required, it is cool to see people at my (3) Earthcaches. I could really careless (Not being rude) if people take one.. The way I know people visited are due to my questions, obviously. I made sure to ask questions that are only found at the sites, example, information signs. I was lucky enough to find signs about the Geology of the area.

 

I take a photo from a finder as a plus, I would hope that some people really enjoyed the area I brought them to. As the others have said I would do what you are ABLE to and enjoy the find. If you dont mind, please post a link to the EC that you plan on finding!

 

Have fun!

 

PaneledZero :blink:

Posted

You don't have to take a picture of yourself or the GPS. The current Earthcaching guidelines don't allow those as requirements anymore.

Sure they do....in certain situations...how bout this:

 

Photograph a fossil impression; include your GPS for the purposes of scale determination.

You are quite correct. Your example and others come in under the wire! You know they have a GPSr with them. Other tools present unless stated????????

It is a judgment call if you are anyone else is circumventing the guidelines. That's up to the reviewers and/or folks at Groundspeak. Looks OK to us, but don't take our word for it, we still cling to the need for photos. :blink:

Posted

IMHO, the picture is to show the CO that you were there.

 

Sure, but the guidelines now deem it unacceptable to require such photos.

 

As an Earthcache owner, your logging requirements - which can involve other sorts of photos, as mentioned - should be rigorous enough that they can't easily be falsified without detection. Tasks that involve on-site observation and measurement are usually enough to deter all but the most tenacious armchair loggers. And armchair loggers are usually looking for easy caches to log, so if you ask visitors to do several tasks and/or answer several questions, you're even more likely to deter false finds.

 

Remember that there is an entire community of Earthcache enthusiasts right here who could probably come up with all kinds of great ideas for tasks if you're stumped.

 

Since removing photo requirements from my Earthcaches, I find that most Earthcache visitors post photos anyway, because they want to (I certainly do). Even people who don't want to show their face or whatever will usually post a nice picture of the site.

 

But it would be nice if word got out, because the new guideline does cause conflicts here and there.

Posted (edited)

Since removing photo requirements from my Earthcaches, I find that most Earthcache visitors post photos, because they want to (I certainly do). Even people who don't want to show their face or whatever will usually post a nice picture of the site.

 

But it would be nice if word got out, because the new guideline does cause conflicts here and there.

 

I like taking pictures of most sites and if the owner asks me to I will try to include one with me in the photo as a courtesy.  It also recently saved a log for an earthcache I recently visited.

 

The owner asked visitors to include a photo of themselves at the cache location and use their gpsr to determine the cache elevation.   My gpsr gave me a particular number that was within 15 feet of that indicated on the topo map I use so I thought I was good to go and had no reason to doubt my reading. But the cache owner's gpsr gave him a significantly different reading and to prevent armchairs he only accepted numbers within 25 feet of his unit.   That presented an interesting dilemma:  I have seen reports where the same model the owner used had a 100 foot variance between two units; elevations also vary if the units use different means of computing the numbers; the margin of error for a unit is usually greater than 25 feet; and who knows what my iphone might have reported if I had been using that. I could have completed the logging requirements - taking the elevation wirh my gpsr - and had the log deleted because our units gave us different numbers.   But the picture came to the rescue.

 

There were so many things to see that day it would have been hard to remember that particular site if asked for more details.  So in the end the photo and my word were all that I had.  Even if it was optional under the guidelines, it come in handy.

 

I am personally less concerned over those types of matters.   I sometimes ask for a photo of the site because I like to see pictures.  And I hope that the questions I use can limit armchair logging without being overly rigid.   But between a photo requirement and a 25 foot margin for my gpsr, I would take the photo.

Edited by mulvaney
Posted

I sometimes cache alone and I sometimes have this problem. Once I brought my camera but the battery was dead. I was using my phone as a gps so I couldn't have the phone in the picture while taking the pic with the phone. I ended up taking a picture of my camera and hoping that the cache lister didn't look too closely and realize that it wasn't a gps.

Posted (edited)

Sure, but the guidelines now deem it unacceptable to require such photos.

 

As an Earthcache owner, your logging requirements - which can involve other sorts of photos, as mentioned -should be rigorous enough that they can't easily be falsified without detection. Tasks that involve on-site observation and measurement are usually enough to deter all but the most tenacious armchair loggers. And armchair loggers are usually looking for easy caches to log, so if you ask visitors to do several tasks and/or answer several questions, you're even more likely to deter false finds.

 

Very true. All I was saying is it is nice to see photos, my Earthcaches have specific questions about the area that I am sure you can not find the answers on the internet..

Edited by PaneledZero
Posted (edited)

i think i will take a pic of my username with rock instead of GPSr. And maybe i can take a pic with my personal car TB and email that to the CO.

 

It's my first one so i really want it to count.

 

IMHO, the picture is to show the CO that you were there. Although its no longer required, it is cool to see people at my (3) Earthcaches. I could really careless (Not being rude) if people take one.. The way I know people visited are due to my questions, obviously. I made sure to ask questions that are only found at the sites, example, information signs. I was lucky enough to find signs about the Geology of the area.

 

I take a photo from a finder as a plus, I would hope that some people really enjoyed the area I brought them to. As the others have said I would do what you are ABLE to and enjoy the find. If you dont mind, please post a link to the EC that you plan on finding!

 

Have fun!

 

PaneledZero :blink:

 

i like taking pics at cache locations! i have taken a bunch!

 

Here's the EC i'm doing tomorrow: #044 - Those Shells Rock !!!

 

i can't wait!

Edited by SeekerOfTheWay
Posted

I like taking pictures and on more than one occasion, a picture has saved the day - though so far not with any Earthcaches that I can recall.

 

But I find that the people who don't want to take pictures of themselves REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want to take pictures of themselves, and that's where the conflicts happen.

Posted

I like taking pictures and on more than one occasion, a picture has saved the day - though so far not with any Earthcaches that I can recall.

 

But I find that the people who don't want to take pictures of themselves REALLY REALLY REALLY don't want to take pictures of themselves, and that's where the conflicts happen.

 

I know cachers who have told me that they do not do many earthcaches or virtuals for this very reason. That is why if I ask for a photo it is something found at the site itself rather than the individual or the gpsr. And it would never be the basis for a deletion. I would rather see a quality picture of a geological formation that took some thought rather than a hasty photo using a timer. Back in the days of locationless caches, people took a lot of pictures showing their arm holding a gpsr. I never liked those photos and went to great lengths to avoid posting them myself.

 

As the OP noted, with new technology, the requirement that a photo show both a person and a gpsr seems even more problematic. The cameras within gpsr units or cell phone/camera/gpsr combinations make this impossible (without carrying a mirror, I suppose).

Posted

I think that most of us enjoy posting our photos with our GPS units at the EC, I do. But to be fair to those who don't is why the photo issue became an ALR. Now, to log the 2 EC's I found yesterday while riding the Creeper Trail from White Top to Damascus. I also learned that there is a small town named Konnarock nearby, then it clicked...... <_<

Posted

The new guidelines do not say that owners cannot require a picture. I submitted an EC after the change in guidelines, with a picture requirement, and had no problem getting that part approved. What you can't do is to require some specific personal object in the picture - face, for example. I would say that your GPS falls into that category as well. In mine, which again was approved after the change in policy, I ask people to take a picture of the feature along with some kind of object to represent the scale of the image. This is common practice among geologists, who usually use a rock hammer or pocket knife or ruler or compass or GPS or whatever they've got in their pack. So to me, this is part of the education of the visit to the site - you learn how to document your field visit like a geologist would, by taking a photograph of the object of interest that includes a scale. Many objects in geology are fractal in nature - that is, the objects can look very similar whether they are really small or really huge. So to know, simply place an object of known dimensions in the picture. But if I were to require something else specific in the pic, I think it would violate the policy. This situation that started this thread, where a cacher is stuck not being able to log the find because the camera and GPS are the same object, should not keep someone from logging the cache. That just leads to extra frustration for people who want to do it, and those kinds of extra frustrations turn people off. It's an unnecessary burden placed upon the finder, and it doesn't contribute anything to the learning experience to require a face, or a GPS, or a whatever, and I also don't think it offers any additional "proof" of being there that other photographic evidence can't also provide, which many EC owners really want to have (and I support that too).

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