Have you ever wondered who else is using the Atlas of Living Australia? For our new blog series Spotlight on Users, we looked through our recent sightings and contacted contributors to find out how and why they use the ALA.

Steven Dew is an amateur photographer based in Queensland. We contacted him way back when the Atlas was starting out, to ask if we could use his images for our new online biodiversity atlas, he agreed and has continued to log his sightings, and beautiful images, ever since.

Often Steven doesn’t know what plant or animal he has photographed and uses the ALA’s species suggestion tool to identify them. He looks through the images displayed until he finds a match. Before using the ALA, he relied on species lists from National Parks or trolling through Google images to find the species he was looking for.

Now the ALA is embedded in Steven’s approach to nature photography.

“The ID tool enhances my experience and I take photos of every living thing I see in the hope I can eventually ID it”, he says.

Steven is an avid birdwatcher and contributes his bird sightings to the ALA through his local BirdLife branch in Queensland. If you would like to see more of Steven’s images, check out his website www.aussiecreatures.net.

Please contact us if you would like to share how or why you use the Atlas of Living Australia.

Sundew
Sundew – Image: Steven Dew

Crimson Chat - Image: Steven Dew
Crimson Chat – Image: Steven Dew