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.
Catching one worth photographing
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. A destination line appears on the vessels that broadcast one, which is a minority, and it is typed in by hand aboard.
- Track history shows where she has actually been, which is a useful reference for how she moves in your water: 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 a season's work is a list rather than a memory. Lists
There is no arrivals board. AIS Fleet answers "where is this vessel" rather than "what is due here", so the way to work a port is to follow the vessels that call there and let the departure notices warn you. There is no ETA, no alert when a vessel comes within a distance of you, and no way to be told about a vessel nobody is watching for you.
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.
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.
She has to be a vessel 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. 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: they answer something you asked for.
You can delete your own photos, published or waiting, from the Photos tab. A published photo can also be taken down by us later if someone raises a problem with it.
The credit
The photo credit box is yours, and what you type is remembered for the next upload. Your credit is not a caption bolted on beside the picture: it is drawn into the image itself, under the Saillogger mark, 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 publishing gives away
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 or in a cache can outlive a takedown by days. Removing a photo stops it being served; it cannot reach into a copy that has already left.
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. A person reviews every submission before it appears.
If a published photo of your boat shows something you would rather it did not, write to [email protected] with her MMSI and we will take it down. Your boat on AIS Fleet covers the rest of what other people can see.