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I'm often frustrated by the dross that comes my way from people's photo albums on Facebook - I can’t understand why people would want to clog up the internet with out of focus, badly shot and repetitive photography.

Some would say I'm taking it all a little too seriously, and they'd be right of course, but I refuse to believe I'm the only one. As a result I'm speaking for all those that are too polite to say anything, those that don't want to cause a stir by suggesting that their best mate, sister or colleague just exercise some restraint with that damn upload button. Share this article, get the word out, and help to make the internet a more pleasant place.


1. Don't Spam. Nobody needs to see 60 images of your drunken night out every single week; guess what, it was the same as last week’s night out, the one before that, and the one before that - if I didn't care then, I definitely don't care now. Ten to fifteen images, fine, if you must, but 60 every week - no.

2. Keep it short. If you can’t capture the essence of an event in less than 100 images, you're doing it wrong. I don't know why Facebook ever raised the limit up from 60 - this should be more than enough to tell any story. Long albums make people bored, even if the event they’re depicting wasn’t; do you really want the emotion people associate with your album to be one of boredom? Keep it at short as is practicable - people’s imaginations are better at filling in the gaps than an extra 40 photos ever would be.

3. Don’t ever replicate images. Yes, you may have taken four shots of the group hug to make sure you got a good one but why on earth would you put the three lesser ones up too? This goes for other shots as well - nobody needs to see the church/bridge/ancient ruin from 18 different angles, again, people get bored. Stop being lazy and take the time to sort out the wheat from the chaff before uploading - other people won’t do it for you, they’ll just label all your images as crap.

4. Editing is important. If you’re going to get ‘creative’ and take images in portrait orientation, change the images to portrait orientation before uploading them. There is nothing more annoying than flicking through an album and having to turn your head 90 degrees every time you couldn’t be arsed to reorient an image. While we’re on the topic of editing, don’t ever upload out of focus or blurry images, they serve no value apart from to highlight yourself as lazy and incapable of taking a decent photo, even with all the electronic aids available to you in this day and age.

5. Be a good friend. Facebook has a friend tagging feature - use it. People like having nice pictures of themselves, even if most are too afraid of looking vain to say so, so be a good friend and tag. This also goes the other way however, don’t tag (or don’t even publish) photos where people don’t look their best. You can catch anyone looking awful if you take enough pictures, so don’t feel all superior just because nobody caught one of you. You can bend this rule if you know certain people are happy to look a fool or the situation calls for it (a stag do for instance), but exercise discretion. You want people to be happy that you’ve got your camera out; not shying away because they know you’ll make them look a fool online.