Submit Some Photos
Yes! You too can submit photos to humanclock.com, but first you need to login or create an account first.

I know this is annoying but we were receiving too much garbage and people were typing in their email addresses wrong. Feel free to use an alternate email address you use for this sort of thing, we just need a way of contacting you concerning your submissions.
Guidelines
Craig takes picture!
Wanna be famous for a minute? Tired of seeing nothing but photos in Portland, Oregon? Then send in a photo!

Here is a list of all the digital timeslots and how many photos occupy each minute.

We are trying to get a decent cross section of Earth inhabitants on this website. So sendin those photos of minivan-driving soccer moms, trustafarian hippies, punkers, football players, pimps, players, private eyes, Commodore 64 programmers, Who's the Boss? fan fiction writers, bible-belt preachers, politicians, actors, musicians, auto mechanics, doctors, catergorically defined people who don't feel they belong in a category, tree-huggers, rednecks, snooty rich people, snooty poor people, pictures from famous places, pictures of famous people, people who can solve a Rubick's cube, jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, plumbers, D & D players, etc.
The very pushy-sounding rules
  • There needs to be a time in the photo!
  • Take photos outdoors! This isn't a requirement, but your photo will have a better chance at making it in if it was taken outdoors. Indoor photos start to look the same after awhile.
  • The photo cannot be altered after you take it. This means that the time HAS to be within the actual photo, not added later with an image editor or paint program. This also includes using your image editor to add phrases overtop of the clock photo such as "Heavy Metal Rules Man!" or "Time for Bed..."
  • No web URL's or blatant attempts at product multi-national product promotion in the photo. By "blatant attempt" I mean that your photo looks more like it belongs in commercials, the evening news, movies, or above a public bathroom urinal.
  • Photos must be at least 1024x768 in size and in JPEG format. You can also submit vertical photos, just be sure to rotate it to the correct position.
  • You do not need to crop your photos, I will take care of that. Send them in as high resolution as possible. It is actually better if you don't crop the photos since it gives me more to work with.
  • Photos in popular timeslots might get replaced/deactivated as need be if I need that timeslot for a special reason. (4:20, 11:11, rock stars, etc)
  • The photo does NOT have to be taken at the exact time it represents, but the time shown in the photograph should fit the surroundings in the photograph. If you are taking a photo and it is daylight outside, then you should be holding up a time which would occur in daylight. Try and make the theme fit also, so don't send in photos of a bunch of drunk friends at a bar holding up 7:30am. (well..unless it is happy hour at the bar for the workers next door who just got off the graveyard shift)
  • No webcam photos, the quality isn't good.
The high-school guidance counselor sounding rules
  • Take photos outdoors if possible! Keep in mind that people viewing the site are most likely indoors and are supposed to be working. Encourage their daydreaming and hampered productivity!
  • It helps if you have the time written fairly large to the point where the "time" takes up a decent amount of the picture. The numbers don't necessarily have to be huge, just "bold" enough to be readable when the picture is reduced down to 150 pixels wide.
  • use a digital camera, this way you can tell if your clock picture turned out or not. (the sun has a bad habit of bleaching out clock numbers if you hold up a sign in bright sunlight).
  • Be creative. Typing up a time in a large font on your computer screen and taking a picture has been done 1,000 times already and I reject most of them now. You don't necessarily have to do something goofy in the photo. Some of the best clock photos on this site are ones with random things in the background such as a scrap metal bin, a guy working on his car, or somebody grubbing down on some chili.
The San Francisco Power Lawyer-sounding stuff
  • All photos become property of humanclock.com.
  • You will not be financially compensated now or anytime in the future for your submission. But you will however, get the satisfaction of a job well done and thousands of people seeing your photo.
  • Please do not submit any copyrighted photos.
Photo Comments
With each photo you can tell users a little bit about the photo. Use "photo comments" section to tell viewers a little background on the photo you are submitting. It might be a specific description of where the photo was taken, and/or anything that might have happened before or after you took the photo. Feel free to include comments directly to the admin if needed.

Comments are reviewed and edited for clarity by an admin. Things that (usually) do not make the cut include
• website urls
• first and last names of people (unless you have their permission or they are publicly known people)
• witty caption puns (eg: "Time to __________")
Humancalendar photos
  • Submit a photo for any date you want, multiple photos for a given date will be shown at random.
  • Calendar photos currently show up on the left sidebar on the non-clock pages.
Humanclock.tv videos
The video clock is a lot more of complex of an operation. The videos are all need to be edited and have a lot of post-processing done to them. Videos are also a lot less forgiving in general. How people interact with photos is much different than how they interact with video.
  • Videos MUST be at least 720p HD.
  • Videos need to be be LONGER than a minute (eg 90-120 seconds) so I can edit them down as needed. For logistical reasons I need to have more than a minute's worth of footage for each video.
  • Submit the raw, unedited video files.
  • No computer generated media or CGI special effects nonsense. The last thing I want this site to do is look like lousy outtakes from Indiana Jones & the Crystal Skull.
  • No blantant advertisements/spam. If you want to do a video to promote something, please contact me.
  • The time must be easily readable and have an actual time containing a colon (or analog clock of some sort). No existing numbers like price tags, house numbers, random numbers, etc will not make it into the clock.
  • Videos with excessive barfy motion (eg "shaky cam"), bad lighting, etc. will not be used.
Bad Photo Examples
"Unacceptable" photos
not a clock photo
There is no time in this photo.
These are not even clock photos! The first photo has no time in it. To this day I still receive photos with no time in them. With the second photo, the time has been added long after the photo was taken. (currently 14 years). Yes, this is me with the Camaro I owned in high school. (Winger cassettes not pictured). Cat Schwartz of Tech TV fame called my Camaro "hot".

Ah, redemption.

Although I sold the camaro in 1993, somehow the snow tires managed to stay in my parent's pasture for the next 12 years, complete with "Americana" weeds growing though them. When I bought my house in 2005, Dad told me to move them to my new backyard, where they now sit awaiting weeds to grow though them.

not a clock photo
The time needs to be part of the original photo. Also, I no longer have this Camaro, but the snow tires are still in my parent's backyard, now with three foot high weeds growing though them. (how Americana!)

2005 update: They are now in my backyard, one is a planter and the other is holding down the lid of the compost bin.
not a clock photo
There is no time in the photo, plus it is from another era. (eg guns+kids, tube socks, painter's caps were trendy, and vintage shorts that would cost $300 now)
"Kinda-been-done-already" photos
Although the examples below are technically clock photos, they have been done so many times already that I rarely put them into the site. Creative and unique photos keep humanclock.com interesting, redundant photos make it start to feel like a visit to a generic strip mall. It's not that the photos are boring, it is just that everyone else has had the same idea already.
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Ahh, the house address. Many people have them!
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The clock radio.

Note: Sagacious humanclock.com viewers will spot the cassette deck used for making the Tandy Model 100 Webserver.
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License Plate (or number plate as Europeans and Australians call them)
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Some people would find this cool, others would find it boring, the main point is that the "time" is REALLY hard to read.
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Photos of existing clocks with nothing else in the photo.

Keep in mind that a large majority of the people watching humanclock.com during the day are people stuck inside a building, sitting in front of a computer. Show them the outside world! You'd be amazed at the cool photos you can take if you leave your comfy computer chair.

Webcam photos I don't accept just because the quality is rarely good.
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"When bad clock photos become good"
a dull photo...
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Unless your name is Andy Warhol or Yoko Ono, people would call this photo "dross" or "boring".

(If you were Andy or Yoko, then it would be described as an "enigmatically seminal statement reflecting the equation of the moment within a perpendicular universe")
...becomes a much gooder one!
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By standing back a bit to capture more elements within the photo, such as a note to roommates and a nice medical student named Gonzo, the photo becomes a bit more i nteresting.