About us
is a website showing photos of animals, focusing on wildlife.
Previously www.animalphotos.me and started as a site for British wildlife photos (many for the London Wildlife Trust), as more visitors, including schools, have used the photos to identify animals, it has developed to include non-British and domestic animals.
ALL PHOTOS ARE COPYRIGHT.
Photos on the site have been taken mostly by Elizabeth Barrett unless shown otherwise. All are reduced in resolution for the web.
Address as picture to minimise spam.
Pressenza interview
Purpose: When the website was started in the early 2000s, Google Images didn’t exist and there was an interest in images, not only of animals but of all kinds. Later, Google scraped everyone’s images for their monopolistic site and traffic declined (and don’t get me started on that pirate image-stealing site, Pinterest, that came later). Even after Google Images, there still seemed to be a niche for wildlife identification (back garden birds, countryside ducks and butterflies pages remained popular), but Google Lens (reverse image ID) put an end to that and the site is now just a hobby with little purpose. However, it still attracts visitors from around the world so it is still maintained and updated.
Monetisation: Some visitors have asked why the site doesn’t show adverts. Some years ago the site ran adverts from Google Ads. Initially the ad income covered domain name and hosting costs although it never made a contribution to costs of content. As Google took more of the ad revenue in addition to stealing content and visitors, the ad revenue declined to a pittance. Moreover, an increasing amount of time was spent on deleting unsuitable ads. Although the box had been ticked to exclude adult ads on a family-friendly site, many still appeared. Also there was no way to exclude ads for the killing of animals, so that ads for pest control showed on the moth and beetle ID pages, duck hunting or pigeon/bird shooting on their pages, “sport” shooting on pages for pheasants, deer, bears, lions and many others. Unfortunately these ads could only be seen and taken down after they had appeared on the site, so damage had already been done. That, together with the time taken to review ads, made the posting of ads unviable and they were removed.
Acknowledgement: Thank you to those visitors who have written appreciative or encouraging comments, to those who have shared their own photos of animals on the site (acknowledged on appropriate pages), to those who have asked permission before using an image from the site and to those who visit to learn from or enjoy the site.