Introduction

Photography has greatly changed since we began publishing photography guidelines online. Survey and other imagery shifted from physical 35mm film and prints to a fully digital world. Find our most recent guidelines and recommendations here as we update our guidance.

General tips and recommendations

New Jersey and National Register of Historic Places photography

The National Register of Historic Places program accepts digital photography. However, this does not mean they will accept any digital photographs in any format. NPS has guidelines for the quality and format of digital submissions. State-level listings must follow these guidelines, too, because they precede national listing.

NPS updated their photography guidelines in 2024. Among other changes, this updated policy notably allows for

• Electronic submissions of photographs.
• The submission of JPEGs, not just TIFFs.

NPS and our office both prefer electronic submissions. We recommend a digital nomination workflow for both editing and image quality reasons. However, we can still accept hard copy submissions. You may need to know printing and/or photo disc details before working with a print shop, so we still recommend reading NPS’s guidelines first. Our office will create electronic copies of hard copy submissions for NPS. The original hard copy stays archived at our office with our other paper nominations.

Photographic recordation

National Park Service (NPS) Heritage Documentation Programs

The Heritage Documentation Programs include three main programs:

• Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS)
• Historic American Engineering Record (HAER)
• Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS)

These programs exclusively use large-format black and white film photography. Film provides the maximum level of detail and stability possible for photographic archives. The following pages summarize NPS and National Archives guidance and provide further links.