As all of our watchers might have noticed, club has changed to dA group system. That makes functioning much easier for admins, but also better for members who wish to display their art to the wider public. All that is =hoogathy ‘s deed, but as =Ilharess used to be an admin of the group for a long time, decided to offer her help – so here we are again.

Here's roughly how it works:

To join, click on the appropriate button on the front page – your membership is automatically approved.

To submit, there's another button on the front page, and when you click it, a window will open asking you which image from your gallery you want to submit, and to which gallery folder. Our gallery was divided to several folders to group deviations with similar theme, and that will be explained in detail in the following lines. Although I'm sure many of you wish to display loads of images, keep in mind that only one submission per day is allowed not to flood watchers with images which they then won’t even look at. if that proves too much, we’ll make further restrictions. Choose only high quality images, and make sure that they are resized so full view is 800-1200 px wide and 800-1200px high: smaller images you just can’t enjoy, and bigger you can’t see in full view on most monitors. If you submit a wallpaper, you can still limit the full view image and leave download option for full size.
This is primarily photo club, but some works in different media might also be accepted if appropriate.

Before submitting your work you have to understand what really belongs to APN category on deviantART as many images are miscats: if you submit such image, that means you haven’t read and understood rules on dA and your image will be reported as miscat and not accepted in the gallery. When photographing animals or weather or sky in urban environment, please exclude as much of the urban environment as possible because images that have too much of it included won’t be accepted. Also make sure that any building or people are not too big in the image, or are actually main subject and nature only the background.

Now to our gallery folders:

Wild plants and fungi: here belong all plants, mushrooms, lichens, flowers etc that you photographed in the nature, or possibly if you have them planted. Only wild varieties belong here, and no cut flowers or mushrooms.

Garden plants and flowers: here belong all plants that were cultivated by people and do not grow as such in nature. Please be sure that plant/flower is the main focus, and not entire flowerbed or house behind. Again, no cut flowers and arrangement – they don’t belong in APN gallery, but in still life.

Wild animals: here you can put any animal that you photographed in nature, including vertebrates (mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians) and invertebrates (insects, spiders, snails, jellyfish etc). photos of zoo animals are allowed, but only if it’s not very visible they are in the cage or something. Some pets also belong here. No stuffed or dead animals, nor their parts, please.

Domesticated animals: all animals in their cultivated forms, including of course cats and dogs, cows, sheep, chicken etc. Also, please try to capture them somewhere outside in at least semi-natural environment.

Naturescapes: here belong waterscapes and landscapes. Those two are the most misused categories on dA. Waterscape is a natural view where water is the main element in the picture, be it sea, river, lake or other. But bridges, fountains, swimming pools, marinas and harbours, and even natural waters with buildings on the coastline, are not nature and don’t belong to this gallery. Landscape is a natural view where mainland is the major focus. Again, although it may include a mountain hut or a small village in the distance, images with man made structures in focus are not suitable for nature gallery. That also applies to cityscapes that many push into landscapes and waterscapes. Gardens, parks and cemeteries are also not nature/landscapes – they belong to urban & rural gallery, and are not suitable for this club.

Macro nature: first of all, there is a big difference between macro and close-up, and only the first one is included here. For macro image, it’s not enough to shoot from pretty close distance and use macro mode, or even macro lens. You have to shoot in 1:1 mode, which means you have to at minimum distance from your subject, and use 1:1 macro lens. That way you can’t get a macro shot of the whole dragonfly, but only a detail of it. Also, be careful what you put in nature category: playing with coloured water drops might be pretty but it’s not nature.

Other: here belong all other categories of APN gallery not mentioned before – sky, weather etc. Again, avoid man made structures and people in the images.

Nature in other media: if you have something other than photos to share, here is where it belongs – only nature themed stuff goes here, no fantasy nor sceneries with man made structures nor people.

All the notices will be displayed in the box below – make sure to read it every once in a while.

Now, let’s get started slowly – group will be fully functional in January.

Your admins:

=hoogathy and =Ilharess