SourceWatch:Project:Find pictures for the 2008 congressional candidates

This participatory project was featured from October 8-14, 2007. You can help out by pitching in here or by checking out the other things you can do at the main "things you can do" page. Please contact the staff editors if you need any assistance.

Goal

The goal of this project is to find pictures online for each of the candidates running for U.S. Congress in 2008 that are profiled in Congresspedia. This makes the state portals look nice, among other things.

How-to

1. First, you should probably see what's missing. The easiest way is to go to one of the main state portals and look under "candidates". Is there a red link instead of a picture? That means we're missing a picture. Alternately, go to the complete list of candidate profiles and look for that red link instead of a picture in the top-right corner.
2. Next, find a picture. There are several ways to find images of the candidates:
   • Try going to their campaign website. We believe that using promotional images of candidates from campaign websites on Congresspedia generally falls under "fair use," meaning that we can use them without permission. You can probably find the campaign website listed on their Congresspedia profile (here's the complete list of candidate profiles, but you can also find them on the state portals) and if not there, try searching Google for the candidate's name.
     • Didn't find the campaign website listed on the candidate's Congresspedia profile? Why not go there and add it in? (It should probably go under "Contact".
   • No picture on the campaign website? Try searching the Internet. Probably the best place to go is the Creative Commons image search because you can specifically search for public-domain images. You can also try a plain Google image search or a search for citizen-uploaded pictures on Flickr (which is cool since citizens are writing the profiles, too).
   • What to avoid: Tempting as it may be, try not to upload the worst picture you can find of someone - someone else is just going to take issue with it and find a better one. They can't all be Brad Ellsworth (D-Ind.), but let's be nice, OK? Also, please avoid professional-looking portraits (not released by the campaign), which could be considered marketable "art" because stealing someone's art would be bad (and would probably violate fair use).
3. Save the picture to your computer: Generally you can just right-click a picture online and save it to your computer (Mac users hold down the "control" key and click the image). You can delete it when you're finished and it doesn't matter what the name of the file is - but remember where you saved it! (You'll need that later.)
4. Upload the picture: This is really easy - simply go to that red link you found earlier on the candidate or state portal page and click it. If you've registered (which is required to make edits in order to prevent vandalism, spam, etc. - see here for more info.), simply click the link and you will find yourself at an upload page. Click "browse" and find the file and then click "open." Don't change the destination file name but please do record where you got the picture in the summary. Then click "upload" and you're done! It should show up automatically in the portal and profile pages, though you may need reload the page a few times to get it to show up.

While you're at it

We just launched the congressional elections project and could really use your help in filling in these profiles (and those of the members of Congress). Everything you add is free for your fellow citizens to read and educate themselves with and the staff editors are here to help if you need any assistance. See the research guide to congressional candidates for more ideas.