Hitting the 'Add Photos' contribution limit
About every two weeks, I go through my whole selection of albums of new portal photos and take some nice snaps everywhere I go, improving the portal photo of many places I visit. Unfortunately, I hit the 72 portal photo contribution limit every single time. According to my plethora of emails, I've submitted a tidy sum of 4,000 different portal photos in my lifetime so far. Whether I'd be out in Regional NSW, at the anomaly in Newcastle, or in the bustling streets of Melbourne, I'd be taking a lot of photos, making portals look great and increasing the aesthetic quality of the portal.
But then Prime hit. All of a sudden there was a photo limit as to how many portal photos I could contribute to the network. Throughout the last couple of months, I've been hitting the limit quite regularly which has greatly discouraged me to add new portal photos. There's also the case where there are the most ugliest of photos that have +20 likes which I can't replace even with my faction/group of friends so they're a bit disappointing.
The other major difference was submitting portal photos more than 100km away. I was up for the Newcastle Anomaly in October this year, and I took quite a lot of photos during Mission Day. Usually I end up keeping a couple of keys so I can have remote range of the portals, and then submit them when I have time with Wifi back at home. But Prime has a blocker where it says "You are too far to contribute to this portal", and now I have about 80 odd photos I can't add unless I head up back in range of the area.
So my questions are as follows:
- Why was a limit implemented in terms of portal photo submissions? Were there any instances of abuse or photo spam that Niantic acted upon, and decided to limit it?
- In comparison to the edit limit of 224 per fortnight, why did photos only get 72 per fortnight?
- I can understand the reasoning as to why someone shouldn't contribute their photos in a whole different city, but could it be possible to perhaps be lenient with the contribution of photos in far away locations? Having a 100km radius for a large region like New South Wales means you can be two hours away and be in a whole different city.
I appreciate that having a distance limit of editing ad contributing helps protect the portal network from unauthorised edits, especially people who just do comms edits (tbh I used to always do this when it came to badly spelled nominations), but I kinda would like the privilege to broaden my contribution radius. Maybe like Wayfarer levels or something to prove someone would only do the right thing.

Comments
My guess is that this limit was set to prevent server issues while deploying Prime the first weeks and then NO ONE thought about it ever again.
I myself fell out of the "improve picture quality" train aswell, so I can relate to this.
But that's Niantic watermark! Encourage you to do X then never pay attention again.
You are ridiculous. 4000 photos?
You are exactly the kind of person they created that limit for. It's crazy and arrogant to say things like "making portals look great and increasing the aesthetic quality of the portal."
Chill out and try playing Ingress instead of slapping a photo (and your name) on every portal you visit.
The most likely reason for the low limit is that pictures are handled by niantic employees so limited resources. Every portal does not need a new picture. Focus on the ones with bad pictures.
@XK150, you must be the type of agent who like photos such as a dark Belmore Park, a completely unintelligible Birrong Pools and is fun at art galleries. How uncultured.
Would actually love to actually play Ingress if only someone took our everlasting BAF down over our city but alas, no effect as the spoofers take hold. So there's a whole new meta to kind of pass the time for that.
Photos are actually a fun way to rediscover the actual POI. Ever play a game and notice that all of a sudden, the portal photo changed from some drab, dark pixelated photo to a really beautiful one? People, and definitely PoGo players absolutely notice the smallest things. "Oh look, the photo changed!" In a way, they refresh the game board and making things look interesting again.
But that being said, the majority of photos I have really do have some truly terrible photos. I've been trying to ask fellow agents to get them upvoted just to get rid of photos that probably shouldn't have made it in. I don't do it because it has my agent name on it, but only because I truly do care about aesthetic quality. Unlike uncultured people who thinks it's about craziness and arrogance and attacks agents for appreciating the game in different perspectives.
Example, The Great Northern Hotel, Newcastle. An unappealing, side photo evidently taken from a car.
Here's my photo. A front-view of the heritage-listed building, clearer than the night of day.
But I guess it makes sense considering it is indeed Niantic employees are the ones who are making the approvals. Their work is indeed, appreciated though.
XK150, if you have nothing good to say, rather don't say anything than attack the agent. That's crazy and arrogant on your part. And let others play their metas without your harshness. Yeesh.
You're insane. Looking at just the NL1331 portal shows the importance of portal photos as it shares the experience of agents all over. I know I love sharing my photos just for the sake of updated photos - I upvote good photos regardless of name and faction.
That is nice improvement over the windshield view but the perfect centering and the fragment of the other building makes my eye twitch.
@mysteri0n I'm with,but not this much.
I started this journey back in redacted, when I couldn't create new portal yet, but could update the horrible night/raining/inside the car (this all in one), etc. Later I get the right scale to fit the entire key screen, without black bars on top or side, but I drop it once I knew it change from phone to phone.
Now with prime new picture scales I try to fit it better. Some portal are practically impossible to see what it is because our bad crop from both prime and the submitter.
Tip for begginers: always landscape, with about 10% space from top and bottom.
Protips: portrait, but with guidelines, with the portal right in the middle, with a landscape view using the lines.
Assuming Niantic are manually approving all additional photos and this is the reason for the hold up (an odd position considering that Wayfarer approval for initial photos seems not to require a manual process), perhaps some sort of 'approved photographer status could be given to high volume contributors with a good record to resolve this?
I always imagined a "XM Scribe" status for agents who maintained the accuracy of the portal network even when Seer was still active. The issue is the verifiability of such a thing.
I'm also noting that a photographer status would not require much verifiability. Maybe a "Visionary" title?