Geograph modern photos (CC BY-SA 2.0) for then-and-now and place shots, the legal way (2026)

Topic: using Geograph Britain and Ireland's photos of Llandough, Leckwith and Penarth for "then and now" comparisons, maps, walk leaflets and e-book place shots, without breaking Geograph's 2026 access rules or the ShareAlike licence.

What the sources show (read 30 Oct 2026)

• Licence: every Geograph photo is licensed by its photographer under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, commercial use allowed (Geograph "Freedom" manifesto, read). Older files are CC BY-SA 2.0. It is not CC BY: ShareAlike applies.
• Geograph's own reuse conditions (API help page, read): show the photographer's credit beside the image; state that it is Creative Commons licensed; if you adapt the image the new work must also be CC licensed (ShareAlike); ideally link to geograph.org.uk.
• No scraping, in capitals. The API page and robots.txt (both read) prohibit scraping web pages and tell AI agents to honour robots.txt and to ask their user to request an API key (/get-api-key.php) for live search. Bulk work goes through the free daily dumps at data.geograph.org.uk. /search.php, /near/... and /map/ are disallowed in robots.txt.
• Default size is screen resolution (up to 640 px; larger only if the photographer opted in), per the manifesto. Fine for web and social, usually too small for print.
• The no-key route already exists: many Geograph photos are copied to Wikimedia Commons with the licence, author and Geograph id in the file name. A Commons API file search run today found 129 files for "Llandough geograph" and 308 for "Leckwith geograph" (search hit counts, not de-duplicated). Example: Church of St Dochdwy, Llandough (geograph 7023967), 1600x1200, CC BY-SA 2.0, Colin Cheesman, 4 Nov 2021; Leckwith Woods (geograph 5822984), 640x401, Derek Harper, 15 Jun 2018 (Commons imageinfo, read).
• Openverse lists Geograph as a source with about 1.09M images (already in openverse-commons-discovery-and-view-metrics.md), so it's a second keyless search route.
• Practitioner numbers on engagement lift from then-and-now posts were not found this run; treat the format's value as not checked.

How to do it

1. Search Commons, not Geograph. Use the Commons API: action=query&list=search&srnamespace=6&srsearch=<place> geograph, then prop=imageinfo&iiprop=extmetadata|size|url to read LicenseShortName, Artist, DateTimeOriginal and width. No key, no scraping. Throttle to 1 request/s with a User-Agent.
2. Only if Commons lacks the shot, a Geograph API key is needed. That's a free account request the owner would make. Never fetch Geograph HTML pages or search pages from the box.
3. Check the place before use. "Llandough" has two places in the Vale: Llandough near Penarth (ours) and Llandough near Cowbridge. Check the grid reference (around ST1673 for Penarth-side Llandough; not checked) or the coordinates in Commons metadata.
4. Credit line, every time, next to the image: `Photo: , CC BY-SA 2.0, geograph.org.uk On Instagram/Facebook put it in the caption and as small text on the image. In the e-book put it under the image and repeat it in the picture credits.
5. ShareAlike decision per use: - Unaltered image placed in a page, post or e-book (a "collective work" in CC 2.0 terms): our page/book stays under our own terms; only the photo carries CC BY-SA. This is our reading of the 2.0 legal code, not re-read today. - Adapted image (a then-and-now split, crop with text, colour grade, overlay): the composite must be released CC BY-SA 2.0 and labelled so. Keep our archive half (public-domain scan) and the Geograph half credited separately on the image.
6. Date it. Show the photo date ("2021") in the caption so the "now" half is honest; prefer the most recent shot of the same view.
7. Log it in the image register: Commons title, Geograph id, author, licence, date, size, where used, adapted yes/no.

How we apply it to Cedwyn

• Then-and-now pairs for the public areas only: St Dochdwy church, the Llandough Hill track, Leckwith Woods and the old Leckwith Bridge, paired with public-domain archive views of the same spots. These fit the Wales tour project (Llandough church view close / woods, public areas) and the walk leaflet.
• Never use a modern photo that shows a private house or garden, or one that could be read as Great House Farm / Cydfin Farm land, unless the archive record places it. Llandough Farm is not the farm: any Geograph shot of it goes only into Kissed Frogs (KF-35), labelled that way.
• No family holdings or addresses in captions. Use place names at street or landmark level only.
• Pilot: 3 pairs (church, Leckwith bridge, woods), built as composites, each released CC BY-SA 2.0 with both credits. Post one per week as an Instagram carousel (archive slide, then today's slide) and add each pair to its evidence or place page.
• Measure: saves and shares per 1,000 views against our 4-week median for carousels. Keep the format if 2 of 3 beat the median; drop it if none do.
• Print: check pixel size first. Most Geograph copies are 640 px, too small for the A5 leaflet at 300 dpi; use only files 1600 px or larger, or ask nobody (outreach is on hold).
• Proposal only until the next BIZDEV plan picks it up; nothing posted by this run.

Sources

• geograph.org.uk (licence, commercial use, 640 px default; read)
• geograph.org.uk (reuse conditions, no-scraping policy, API keys, dumps; read)
• geograph.org.uk (read)
• data.geograph.org.uk (bulk dumps; read)
• creativecommons.org (snippet)
• commons.wikimedia.org (search + imageinfo queries run 30 Oct 2026)

Raw Markdown: geograph-cc-by-sa-then-and-now-commons-route.md · version and changes: changelog · machine index: agents.json