2011 resolution - can we have more photos from the UK please England

Submitted by Andy B on Sunday, 09 January 2011 Page Views: 3436

Country: England

**Cerrig Duon stone circle** submitted by cerrig : Winter Solstice ( nearly, 22nd dec ) Looking South. (Vote or comment on this photo)

With all the fascinating sites and photos being submitted worldwide, "where are all the photos and new discoveries from the UK" I hear you (perhaps) cry. Well we're just not being sent them as much as we used to. So while we have stacks of fantastic material coming in from elsewhere in Europe and further afield - and thanks to everyone contributing these - in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland people seem to be flagging somewhat.

So how about making a 2011 New Year's Resolution to get out, find and photograph some obscure sites that we don't yet have images of. (and yes I know it's not 2010 before any more sharp eyed newsletter readers e-mail me)

We still have thousands of sites of all sorts shown in green on our maps - green means that we don't yet have a photo of the site. There are even a lot of stone circles without photos, surprisingly enough given how popular these are. Now is a very good time of year to get out searching for obscure and overgrown sites while the undergrowth is still low. Photos of better known sites are welcome too of course. Or indeed sites that we don't yet have listed. Please add these here first before submitting photos.

You can either research locations on the Portal, or you can download KML files to open and view our data in Google Earth. You can also convert these to load into your satnav or GPS receiver with a bit of fiddling, ask in the forum for help.

This then is a good time to remind you about our Reward Scheme to recognise those who put the most effort into finding new sites.

We don't care how unlovely the site is, we even welcome photos of empty fields if you are 99% sure you have tracked down the the location of a destroyed site. As long as it has some root in prehistory or is in one of the other categories of related sites that we include

Another important point to make is that even if you can't get out into the great outdoors there is still a lot you can do to research the location and facts of sites from books, the rest of the internet, Google and Bing maps, Street View and all the rest. Look for the square icons with links from our pages to get you started.

There are also thousands of shareable 'creative commons' images out there that you could track down and submit to our gallery, with credit to the photographer of course. And don't forget old photos and illustrations from books that are out of copyright. We would really welcome more of these. I would even go as far as to say that if anyone has any databases of sites to share we'd be pleased to consider incorporating them, we have an Excel spreadsheet template to allow bulk uploading of sites by the thousand.

As always, the most interesting sites will be featured on our front page, our thousands strong e-mail newsletter, RSS, Facebook and Twitter feeds and going back to the rewards scheme you can win some nice prizes.

If you do use any of those new fangled web services, please 'like', 'friend' or follow us as it makes us feel loved but don't get sucked into these things too far or give them too much personal data or photos. Unlike them we don't try and take copyright of any of your work or do anything sinister with your personal information. Please keep supporting friendly neighborhood web sites like ourselves and keep the web from being wholly taken over by big corporations.

Finally apologies to all Scots and Welsh for the Megaliths in England graphic, no offence intended but that's the closest we have on file.

Finally finally the Megalithic Portal will be 10 years old very soon and we are trying to work out how best to mark this, more on this soon...

Oh and there is one more thing, would you like a regular 'update' blog like this from me? Heck*, we could even call it something like Address Un-druidion. Not really my style as an un-guru to showboat but what do you think "Brothers’n’Sisters"?

Yours as ever
Andy B
Megalithic Portal Founder

* Note essential "swear word" cleverly inserted at this point

Note: Happy New Year and a call to action for all our readers in the UK!

Contributor Bio for Andy B: Megalithic Portal Founding Editor.

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