Hi all,
we’re really often discussing how important a good supporting photos is and how it can influence the outcome of your submission.
With this thread I want to collect the best tipps (and photos) for support photos.
If you’re interested in sharing your most brilliant support photo please provide a short informationen why you choose this composition.
If not, any tipps are welcome 
My contribution is the following:
Main:
Support:
The POI is deep in the wood and I choose my support photo from behind the POI to contain the sign in the background which is a numbered security point and a registered educational sign about nature.
The most important thing with the support photo is to assist reviewers with confirming that the POI exists and is in the marked location. Showing that there is pedestrian access usually comes for free with a good supporting photo.
To do this, make sure your supporting photo always includes the POI. One way to do this is to simply walk backwards some distance and take a photo of the POI from further away. Sometimes, you will want to put the POI towards the edge of the photo to get better context, but always keep it in view.
How to: Cafe submission
Well, this is a staff approved but…this is a supporting photo for a cafe shop. It show the sign on the roof, show the people enjoying the day within the cafe shop, which can be direct proof for a great place to socialize.
With a POI that is not visible on streetview or ‘satellite’ images, you can (and should) use the supporting photo to assist reviewers with matching the location using other objects.
If there are streetview images close by, you can use the supporting photo to link from your POI to the streetview images by including nearby significant objects (such as buildings).
Even if there isn’t streetview, you can still include objects (e.g., buildings, parking areas) which are large enough to appear on ‘satellite’ images.
Now that web submit allows multiple photos, it’s possible to give more context for a location. For example, I nominated a flower cart at a local train station and was able to give a ‘surrounding area’ photo to help verify the location, as well as a plaque on the cart showing it was a project from a local high school.
Similarly, when nominating a ballroom at a local hotel, I didn’t just show where it was, but I took a photo of a digital sign that listed what events were going on in that room at the current convention, to help highlight it as a great place to socialize, with concerts and meet’n’greets happening in that space.
I feel that using web submissions with the ability to include up to 5 supporting photos is a separate topic. Many people will still be submitting in Pokemon Go itself and need to know how to improve the one supporting photo allowed there. Making the advice become “don’t use Pokemon Go to submit [pokestops]” doesn’t feel like the right thing to be doing.
I think this is a great note!
I much prefer this to collage photos for the supporting photo. They are allowed, but since each image is smaller, it is harder for me to see as a reviewer.
I think it’s worth having the discussion of both methods. People should know that they have both options. For example, this weekend, I was submitting in an area where I had terrible cell service. So while I really wanted to use the new web submission, I had to use PGO and choose Upload Later. That’s the only way I could avoid my submissions timing out and eating a nomination. So I while I thought I was going to completely abandon PGO as a submission process, it turns out that there is a time and place to use it.
The same goes for needing really advanced support photos/information. If a situation simply calls for additional photos, people need to know that web submit is an option. Either way, we still need to show the object in the (or one of the) supporting photo(s).
It’s a good idea to research your nomination as if you were someone who’s going to review the submission.
The two most readily available resources to reviewers are satellite and street view so if you look at those and can see your nomination then your supporting photo(s) doesn’t need to worry about identifying it’s location and can focus on another aspect of what makes your submission good, like safe access. If your submission isn’t visible in street view or satellite then you may want to see if there’s another feature that is clearly visible in one of those and find a way to frame your submission so that the other landmark is visible along with your submission.
I think we can discuss web submit supporting photos here, too. I’ve gotten some bad web submissions to review, where they don’t show the POI with the surrounding area, just the surrounding area.
For example, here’s my first web submission:
Main:
Supporting:
If I was submitting this via PoGo, I’d use the 1st or 2nd supporting photo, because of the buildings in the background (all of which are on satellite/Street View). The 3rd photo I took as an extra but included, as the slide park building isn’t on satellite view yet, but can be seen being built on Street View, so the 1st and 2nd would be better for a PoGo submit. Yes, the 3rd could be used, but being I focused on the other sign the other 2 are better.
Now for an indoor submission, submitted via PoGo as web submit wasn’t yet an option.
Main:
Supporting:
The mural is in the lobby, so I made sure to include the front doors/windows of the building in the supporting photo. So, while this can’t be seen on Street View, if a reviewer was looking at that, they could compare my location pin to my supporting photo to confirm that the mural is where I put the pin.
My personal how-to for any trail marker submission:
Main photo:
A good close-up shot.
Supporting photo:
A wide-area shot that still shows the object of focus somewhere in the picture.
I haven’t reviewed in a long time, but back when I did, one of my main grievances was when the object of focus was nowhere to be found in the supporting photo.
This is an art piece I found on the third floor of a 39-floor mixed-use commercial building in central Osaka. I photographed the surrounding shops and escalators and attached a floor map of the facility so reviewers can confirm its location.
I also attached the piece’s tags to verify the title is correct.
Main photo:
Actually, I do have a supporting photo example I want to share, since I’m at my computer now. I was at a convention last weekend, and there’s an area at the main convention hotel that’s nicknamed “the fishbowl”. It’s an atrium with a glass dome roof, with lounge seating on the first floor and hangout nooks on the second floor, which is always a gathering spot during conventions.
As you can tell, that picture of the roof is wonderfully distinctive, but it’s not very good at explaining the space as a hangout. Which is why I used supporting pictures that had a slice of roof, but also showed the people socializing in the space:
The dome was easily visible on satellite, so I didn’t need to use my supporting pictures to verify location, just that it was actually a space that got used for socializing during cons. Note: yes, I think I could have done this one in PoGo with just one of these supporting photos. I’d likely have gone with the first or the last to illustrate that both floors of atrium beneath the dome were used for hangouts.
i miei approcci sono due il primo è s sono in un parco o in una zona dove non c’è street view o google maps o punti di riferimento una foto della richiesta della sua geocalizazzione per far capire e confrontare la posizione
