Hello. You may have been directed to this page because Wikipedia (or one of our sister projects) has an article about you (or mentioning you; or someone that you represent) that would benefit from a picture of you. If so, welcome to Wikipedia!
Providing an image that Wikipedia can use can be as simple as taking a selfie and posting it to social media. You'll just need to declare a particular licence in that selfie's description or comments. There are other ways to contribute an image, too. Here's some guidance on how you can do so.
Why Wikipedia wants your picture
Wikipedia (like its sister projects) uses images that document the things we write about, that includes people. Biography articles benefit from a photograph of the subject, and images can break up long sections of text in other articles, making them more attractive, and easier to understand for people whose English or reading skills are limited.
Use of images
We host the majority of images at our free media repository, Wikimedia Commons. This also makes them available for use not just on the English-language Wikipedia, but on all 300 Wikipedias, in languages from French to Japanese, Urdu to Cornish.
We believe such images should be made available for everyone to share and use. Therefore your images will help not only Wikipedia, but also the creators of other tools and services. You should be aware that this may include the creation of commercial products. The image's copyright holder can opt for the right to be identified as the image creator to be protected in all cases.
Suitable pictures
An image of you used on Wikipedia will be seen very widely. Please pick a good one that is well-lit and in focus. A portrait photo at head-and-shoulders or waist-length, although, if you are best known for an activity, like rock climbing or public speaking, a picture of you doing that can work well. Avoid group shots where you may be indistinguishable from others. A recent picture is best, unless you're well known for something you did many years ago.
Please supply a picture at the highest resolution you can—so that it will look good on a big screen or if printed.
Ownership
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You must not upload pictures of which you do not own the copyright, unless you are licensed to do so!
The easiest picture in terms of copyright is one that you have taken yourself. If the fact that it is a selfie is not already obvious from the angle of the photo, it is worth clarifying in the description that you took the photo yourself.
If a picture was taken by a professional photographer, even if you or your employer paid them, then you must be sure that they gave a transfer of copyright. In some countries (such as Germany), transfer of copyright is not possible. In others (such as the United States) it can normally occur only through a written, signed document (including electronic signatures on digital documents).
If your family member, colleague or friend took the image, even at your request, they are the copyright holder and should be the person to release it—please direct them to this page.
Ways to submit photos
If you can upload an image to any of the following services, or already have an image there, you can just apply or declare a suitable licence (one that says that anyone may use the image, even commercially). Various licences may be used, some of which require that anyone using the image must give you credit for it; and must use the same licence if they make another ("derivative") image using yours.
Keep in mind that the image must be posted on the social media account of the person who owns the copyright (typically the photographer).
Don't forget to tell someone on Wikipedia that you have made an image available! They will be able to copy your images to Wikimedia Commons and add the image to your Wikipedia article. (If you don't know anybody who can help, you can post a message about it on your Wikipedia article's talk page, or at Wikipedia:Teahouse, including a link to the social media image that you want copied to Wikipedia.)
Post the photo to your own (non-private) Instagram account, stating in the image's description or a comment on it that you are releasing that image under a suitable licence.
A suitable licence statement would be:
I agree to publish this image under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
or if you wanted to release the image as completely public domain, requiring no credit attribution:
I agree to publish this image under the Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication 1.0 licence.
You can also edit an old image to include such a licence sentence in its caption, or post a reply to it that includes the licence sentence.
X (formerly Twitter)
Post a photo in a public tweet, where the text of that tweet (or a further tweet in the same thread) makes a clear licence statement such as:
I agree to publish this image under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
or if you wanted to release the image as completely public domain, requiring no credit attribution:
I agree to publish this image under the Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication 1.0 licence.
You can also reply to an old photo tweet with such a licence statement, saying that you are now releasing that photo under that licence.
Post a photo to your own non-private Facebook page, where the text of the post (or a comment from you underneath it) includes a clear statement such as:
I agree to publish this image under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
or if you wanted to release the image as completely public domain, requiring no credit attribution:
I agree to publish this image under the Creative Commons Zero Public Domain Dedication 1.0 licence.
You can also edit the post text of an old image, or reply with a clear licence statement in a comment.
By email
If you would like to submit a photo of yourself by email, you can contact volunteers at photosubmission
wikimedia.org. Please include the photograph in question, along with a statement that you own the copyright on it, and an agreement to release it under a specified free license (our recommendation is CC BY-SA 4.0). If you don't own the copyright, please ask the photographer or copyright owner to send in a release instead. The "declaration of consent" may be used if desired.
Flickr
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Images on Flickr can be transferred provided that they have already been published under an appropriate license.[1] The Upload/Flickr page summarises which of the licenses available in Flickr allow images to be re-used in Wikipedia and elsewhere.
Your own website
If you have a suitable image on your own website, you can license that image under one of the free licenses acceptable to Wikipedia. A direct way to do that is to post a note at your webpage stating that, for example, the image in question is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Alongside, please state that you are the author of the image (or that the photographer transferred the copyright to you) and consider indicating where and when the image was taken.
Then let us know, and we can upload the image to Wikimedia Commons, with no extra steps required of you.
Wikimedia Commons
If you have a Wikipedia account you can upload a photo directly to Wikimedia Commons. Account holders may also use the Upload Wizard to add more than one image at once. You can log-in or sign-up here.
The default licence on Wikimedia Commons is Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0). If you are happy with that, please use the page for uploading images to Commons.
Note that this method may not be suitable if the image have already been published elsewhere.
More about Wikipedia
If you are new to Wikipedia, and want to learn more, you can read our introduction, ask questions at The Teahouse or complete a short online training course at The Wikipedia Adventure. We hope you will stick around!
See also
- Adding an audio recording of your voice to Wikipedia - why you should do it, and how.
- Providing your ORCID iD for use in Wikipedia
- Reporting problems in an article about you
- Wikipedia:Notable person survival kit
- Wikipedia:Autobiography policy – check this before editing a page about you in Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Conflict of interest policy – this before editing a page about you in Wikipedia
- Wikipedia:Images from social media, or elsewhere
References
- ^ Mabbett, Andy (2011). "Open-licensing your images. What it means and how to do it". pigsonthewing.org.uk.