Is this picture not upside down?

[MatsP]

I think this picture should have been flipped around the horizontal axis to turn it "right way up"...


Edit: Make sure the caption is suitable altered too, in that case.

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Mats

[Mike_Noren]

Fish illustration standard is fish facing left, so to conform to standard the image should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
However, I think Planetcatfish wants fish facing right, so then the image should be rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

[MatsP]

Fish illustration standard is fish facing left, so to conform to standard the image should be rotated 90 degrees clockwise.
However, I think Planetcatfish wants fish facing right, so then the image should be rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise.

Yes, I've had the discussion of "fish facing left is the rule" with a photographer of scientific samples who objected to me flipping the picture I'd asked to use in the Cat-eLog. However, there are two options for the Cat-eLog: Facing up or facing right - this picture is facing down, which is "wrong"...

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Mats

[Jools]

Just for the record, I didn't know about the scientific standard until about 5000 images into running this site. It's not some wacky counterculture thing, just prior ignorance. Maybe one day I will flip all 12,000 images. Maybe.

Jools

[Jools]

L240

fixed.

Jools

[Mike_Noren]

Just for the record, I didn't know about the scientific standard until about 5000 images into running this site. It's not some wacky counterculture thing, just prior ignorance. Maybe one day I will flip all 12,000 images. Maybe.

Just a sidenote: I don't know why it is, but I personally prefer images with the fish facing right (non-standard). It just somehow seems more aesthetic to me.

[Jools]

I strongly believe it's to do with reading left to right. Indeed, if you lay out an aqualog style thumbnail book, then it looks great this way, it also looks quite good with the fishes swimming towards the binding - but you can't really do that on the web.

I would like to know what reason (if any) there is behind the standard scientific orientation.

Jools

[MatsP]

I would like to know what reason (if any) there is behind the standard scientific orientation.

Jools

From my understanding, it's just convention. However, a side-effect of this is that the right-hand-side of the fish is often cut open to get to the "inside".

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Mats

[Jools]

Yeah, but why chose that way. Was it, just like me, done that way for the first few and it snowballed from there. Is it the same for all organisms descriptions?

Jools

[Birger]

I have been looking through a lot of old publications lately at http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/8869, the Catalogue of the fresh-water fishes of Africa in the British museum (Natural history) ... By George Albert Boulenger, has fish facing both ways, and many others have plates with fish facing downward.

My point is there must have been a certain time period when the standard was set as many of the old books or scientific publications seem to be all over the place.

Birger
ps.For anyone interested in an old series of books on African fishes, I really like the four volumes in the above link.

[Jools]

I have been looking through a lot of old publications lately at http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/8869, the Catalogue of the fresh-water fishes of Africa in the British museum (Natural history) ... By George Albert Boulenger, has fish facing both ways, and many others have plates with fish facing downward.

Even more off topic, I can (would like to) add any species that we don't have in the catelog from old sources such as these, if anyone wants an offline run through how to do this properly, let me know.

Jools

[Borbi]

Hi,

I have downloaded (and browsed through) almost all available PDFs with loricariids from there.
If you let me know what type of information you would need, I´d be happy to contribute it.

Cheers, Sandor

[Jools]

Excellent, but, this is now way off topic, I will carry this discussion on in another (more apt) topic...

Jools