Every vessel on AIS Fleet can carry photographs, and members are the people who take them. The catalog is shared: a photo you add to a vessel is the photo everyone else sees on her panel.
Finding a vessel to photograph
The map and vessel details can help you plan where to photograph ships:
- Departure notices can help you follow movements. Follow vessels that call nearby and receive notices when AIS Fleet detects a departure. Notices may arrive late or be missed, so check the latest report before setting out. Departures and arrivals
- Search results carry a distance and a direction from your own boat, when one is linked and reporting, or otherwise from the middle of the map you are looking at.
- Her panel carries her speed, her course and when she was last heard, and, on the vessels that send them, her destination and ETA. Her crew types both in by hand, so treat them as a guide rather than a timetable.
- Track history shows where she has actually been, which is a useful reference for how she moves in the waters near you: the last day on every plan, and up to the last week or month on a paid plan. It is a record and not a forecast.
- Every boat you photograph is kept for you on the Boats you photographed list, so the boats from a season of photography are kept together in one list. Lists
There is no arrivals board. AIS Fleet answers "where is this vessel" rather than "what is due here", so to photograph the ships calling at a port, follow those vessels and let the departure notices tell you when one leaves. With your own boat linked, a nearby notice can also tell you when one comes within a distance you choose of your boat. There is no way to be told about a vessel you are not watching.
Photos on a vessel
Open a vessel and her photos are on her panel. They open full screen, and the count sits on the cover so you know how many there are before you tap.
Two different things can appear there, and it is worth knowing which is which:
- Catalog photos are contributed by members, reviewed before they appear, and published with a small two-line mark drawn into the picture: Saillogger on the first line and the photographer's credit under it when one was given.
- An owner's own photo of their boat, published through their Saillogger profile, belongs to them. It is not moderated here and it carries no mark.
Her cover also names her in a list. Wherever boats are listed, among the ones you follow, on a list of yours and on a fleet's roster, the boat's cover photograph appears beside her name. It is the same picture her panel opens on: an owner's own photo of their boat when they publish one and share it with you, and otherwise the newest catalog photo of her. A boat with no photograph shows her initials, and so does a boat whose only photograph is still awaiting review. Her initials also appear if the photograph cannot be loaded.
If a panel says More photos could not be loaded after you have opened a large number of vessels in a short time, a short-term limit on loading photos has been reached, and nothing is wrong with her photos. Wait a while, then tap Retry.
Contribute a photo
Open a vessel on the map and choose Add photo, or start from the Photos tab, which also lists everything you have contributed. The Photos tab route asks for her nine-digit MMSI, so the map route is the easier one when you know her by name.
The vessel has to be one AIS Fleet has already heard, the same ones you can follow. JPG, PNG, GIF and HEIC files are accepted, up to 20 MB.
Every submission is reviewed before it appears. While it waits, you see your own photo on the vessel marked Awaiting review, and nobody else does. Sending one is logged in your Notifications, and the answer arrives there and by e-mail either way. When a photo is published, the link in the e-mail opens the boat on the map, and your photo is on her panel. If we cannot publish it, the note says why, the file is deleted, and the e-mail brings you back to the uploader for that vessel so you can send another. Photo answers are always sent, whatever your notification settings say, because they reply to a photo you submitted.
You can delete your own photos, published or waiting, from the Photos tab. We may also take down a published photo later if someone raises a problem with it.
Published photos of three different boats in a month earn Plus for the month after, ten earn Pro. The counting rules are under How to get Plus or Pro for free.
The Photos tab
On aisfleet.com, the Photos tab lists your photos in two groups, Awaiting review and Published, with the number of photos in each beside its heading. The number beside Published counts all your published photos, from every month and including more than one photo of the same boat. The Boats photographed this month line counts something else: different boats this month, toward Plus or Pro.
Show on map, under each photo and under a photo you open full size, takes you to that boat on the map and opens her panel. The map shows her last reported position, which is where she is now or where she was last heard, and not where the photo was taken. If she has not been heard for a while, the map says when she was last heard. If AIS Fleet has no position for her, her panel still opens and the map says there is no position yet.
Show all on the map, at the top of the tab, opens your Boats you photographed list and turns on its On the map switch, so the boats on it are drawn on your map, framed together. This includes newly added boats and your own boat when you have photographed her and she has a position to show. The list stays on the map until you turn that switch off. Your own boat stays visible when you turn the list off. On a phone the list waits as a bar at the bottom of the map; tap the bar to open it. Lists
The credit
The photo credit box is yours, and what you type is remembered for the next upload. Your credit is drawn into the image itself, under the Saillogger mark, rather than shown as a separate caption, so it travels with the copies AIS Fleet serves. Leave the box blank and the photo publishes uncredited, and note that a very small rendering carries the mark alone, because the credit line would be too small to read. The contribution agreement is the exact promise here, and it does not guarantee credit in every place a photo is used.
If an upload fails
| What you see | What happened | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| The photo is too large to open | The picture contains more detail than we can safely process, even where the file is under 20 MB | Save or share a smaller copy as a JPG and send that one |
| We could not read the photo | The file could not be decoded; it may be damaged or incomplete | Download the original fully, or export a fresh JPG copy, then try again |
| We did not receive the photo | The file never reached us, even though you had chosen it | Worth retrying: choose the photo again and resubmit. If the same picture keeps failing, it is most likely still held in iCloud or another cloud library rather than on the device in front of you, so save a copy to the device and send that |
The location saved in your photo
Photos often store the exact spot and time they were taken. Include the location saved in this photo is ticked by default at upload. Untick it and that location stays out of the catalog and the public display.
The original file on your phone or camera still carries it either way, so if you would rather it was never stored at all, strip the metadata before you upload.
What you grant by publishing
Two practical notes that follow from it:
- Your original is kept, and never shown. What AIS Fleet displays and licenses is one watermarked copy at display size; the full-resolution file you sent stays private.
- A copy already in somebody's browser can outlive a change or takedown. We refresh photo links in our own caches when the displayed copy changes. Removing a photo stops it being served and clears the copies in our own caches, but it cannot reach a copy that has already left: one held in a browser, or saved to a device.
If the boat in the photograph is yours
Members can contribute photographs of your boat, so her gallery may contain pictures you did not take. Every submission is reviewed before it appears.
If a published photo of your boat shows something you would rather it did not show, choose Report a problem with this page on her public page and pick A photo, or write to [email protected] with her MMSI, and we will take the photo down. Your boat on AIS Fleet covers the rest of what other people can see.