Summary of our submission guidelines:

In 50 words: we encourage great photographers to submit your photos, but if you have been photographing for less than 10 years, you should expect some moderation and being asked to make corrections. We offer you ad-free browsing privileges if you upload 40 images to our site, so your efforts are rewarded. Railpictures.ca is a site for photographers who take beautiful photos and we only accept photos from Canada. If you do not understand the difference between 1/500 F/5.6 ISO 200 and 1/500 F8 ISO 500 it is likely that you may end up being rejected. We expect photographers to have an understanding of the technical side of photography and technical reasons are the most likely rejection reason. If you are a seasoned photographer with years under your belt and you understand how to compose a good image, you will find you are rarely, if ever moderated, even if your shot is cloudy. If you photographed trains in the film era, we’d like if you could sharpen your scans, correct any colour casting, remove dust, and what not. If you don’t know how to do this, or lack the computer skill, we can help you, send the photo in and we will help. However, for those who shot trains in the Digital era, we will be the most strict with – you should have a mastery of your technical skill before submitting your modern digital photos. For those who are learning the art of photography and don’t mind submitting or being asked to make a correction – we will help tell you what to correct and welcome you to submit. As long as you have read this notice, and the detailed information below, we can help you grow as a photographer. Now, for those who aren’t so reasonable, the next paragraph is for you (Seasoned photographers – ie: 10-20+ years, skip the next paragraph)

Heed this warning: we have a zero tolerance policy for slander and anger directed at the moderating staff, any of our photographers, or any commenter. We’ll ban accounts for anyone that disobeys this notice and report to the authorities if we think it warrants such, such as stalking or threats. There is also the occasional person that just loses their mind when we ‘ask for corrections’ on photos and clearly has not read this notice. We’re just volunteers, we’re only trying to help, and some photographers just can fathom the thought of being asked for a correction and think their work is perfect. Photography, like any art form, is subjective, and some young photographers don’t understand this concept. Until you’ve been taking photos for 10 plus years.. .you WILL be asked for corrections no matter how good you think you are. If this gets your blood boiling, then don’t hit the submit button. The rest of our reasonable submitters, thank you for being nice and kind to us

• All photographs must be on Canadian soil or of Canadian soil.
• We’re a scene and artistic photography site – not a freight car, roster, or monotonous train photo site. We’ll take the occasional locomotive roster, station, or historic freight car, but we do have our limits. All photos must clearly show the subject, not be obstructed, be well composed, and well lit where possible following all technical guidelines for photographers to get a clear and sharp photo.
• We recommend submissions be 1280 pixels wide for landscape, and 1280 high for portrait. Submissions can be no less than 1000×768 pixels, and no larger than 3500×3500 pixels but again HIGHLY encourage you re-size to 1280 wide or long, slight sharpen, then submit please. Images submitted larger than 5000×5000 will ‘time out’ and seem to never finish uploading. If this is what you are experiencing, reduce your image size.
• *NEW 2019* Watermarks, Copyright, and Borders: We will accept discrete watermarks, copyright tags (with or without your name) and possibly very minimal caption details included in said watermark or copyright tag as long as it’s as discrete as possible and not distracting. We will NOT accept any photos with borders added, excessive paragraphs of caption data in the image, title or description bars, or any window dressings of any kind. We want the photo to speak for itself. Keep it discrete and we’ll let it pass. We give plenty of places to put in caption details, dates, and so on and we prefer if possible all of that data go in our database, so viewers can search for it. Details you put in your image directly are NOT searchable This policy was largely unwritten until now and we may update this again in the future.
• Any railway, transit system, interurban system, industrial, construction, mining, or terminal railroad, or tramway is topical as long as it is Steel Rails AND in Canada, regardless of method of propulsion (Steam, Electric, Diesel, Horse, Battery,etc). There are limits though: *NEW 2022* Tourist mini railways are NOT permitted nor are garden railways.
• Canadian content photographed in other countries is not permitted
• Your photo must be of editorial quality — no artistic license is granted. (No editing objects in/out of photographs, no false colour, etc) You may correct color, white balance, colorspace, contrast, exposure, sharpening, as required for display on the Internet.
• Multiple exposure photography (HDR) is permitted, but photos must look natural and normal, as opposed to extreme high dynamic range photography (HDR) which obliterate contrast and the natural look and feel of a scene.
• Photographs must be of reasonable quality, composition, or historic in nature.
• We want your best work: Have you done sufficient research into a location and did you capture something in the best lighting possible? When it comes to the very common stuff, unless you’re doing an angle you can only do on a cloudy day, we prefer sunshine where possible in daylight, and if you submit a cloudy VIA shot when the next day sun could be had, we’ll ask you to go back and re-take it if you are local to the event. If you’re travelling.. we should be able to recognize this and may give you a pass. Again, this only applies to people shooting today’s trains. Once the subject matter is no longer shootable (ie: retired locomotive, trainset, abandoned line, etc) then your photos will not need to be re-shot (obviously).
• Note that submissions with point and shoot cameras, phones (cameraphones), camcorders, or any low quality camera is very likely to be rejected – but we won’t reject you outright if you know what you are doing and submit a reasonable looking image using equipment of your choosing – you are the artist, after all. If you are NOT a professional or experienced photographer using low quality equipment – heed our warning, just go out and get a low end Digital SLR for $300. You won’t regret it.
• Video captures are HIGHLY discouraged (even 1080i/p or even 4K Video captures) they just do not work, and will be rejected. We tried some 4K video captures and they just didn’t work out – please don’t submit video captures. That’s what youtube is for
• We may give technical leeway to very rare, historic images where the chance of repeat is slim to none
• The following example technical errors will result in image rejection, this is not an exhaustive list: Severe backlighting, overexposure, unlevel, underexposure, poor composition, inappropriate subject matter, duplication of subject matter, poor focus, blurry, poor cropping, vignetting, dust or hair spots on slide, print, lens, or CCD, any major optical flaw
• *NEW*If you are cropping your photos, we ask for a reasonable aspect ratio. Standard ratios are 4:3, 16:9 (HD), or for some older negative types, square or anything in between. Submissions at a ratio of 2:1 or worse will be rejected.
• Slide scans MUST be corrected prior to submission: sharpening (most important) colour, dust, rotation, exposure, and be cropped, no portion of the slide holder must appear in the scan, and you must do your best to sharpen the scan. An example of how a slide can can look is found here ,
• If you are scanning prints, please note that you must sharpen similar to a slide above and your print must be high quality to start. You are welcome to try but the same rules for scanning slides above are in force for Prints. If your scan has technical issues and the image is from before 1950, we will give high consideration to historic content. Poor scans from 1970 or later will be rejected. Anything in between is moderator discretion.
• Moderators may reject an image for any reason otherwise
• Moderators may also submit images and are also subject to a review process
• We are a volunteer run site, DO NOT take offence if we do not accept your photos. As volunteers mistakes do happen, so let us know if you wish to appeal a rejection, but the truth is those who take offence usually haven’t read this far and quite honestly, those who take offence should just submit elsewhere. It’s not worth the waste of blood pressure.
• Moderators can make mistakes — we may accept an image that you may disagree with. Final discretion for acceptance or rejection rests with the moderators. There is NO appeals process at this time but you are welcome to re-submit if you think we rejected in error.
• Comments and Discussion: Comments and Discussion must be topical. We reserve the right to moderate any and all comments for any reason. No negativity will be tolerated and negative comments will be removed. If you have something to say that isn’t nice, consider NOT posting it. If you disagree with someone, something said or a something in a photo please send your concerns directly to the administrators. instead of in public and we will deal with the issue at hand.

Advertising: Running a site like this does cost money, and we do use advertising to offset these costs. As a thank you to our photographers, we offer you ad-free browsing once you reach 40 uploaded photos. Note that railpictures.ca is not a money making venture, we are a not-for-profit and aim to simply cover our costs. There are no salaries or paid positions, only hosting, domain, and bandwidth costs. Unlike other sites that blast you with advertising, we keep it to a minimum while maintaining revenue to cover costs. If someone wanted to donate $1000 we’ll eliminate ads for an entire year for everyone, hint hint!. If you are an advertiser… uhh… we’re not really interested, because we’d rather just not have them