Last night we finished entering into the database the submissions received via email, CD and other means. The final tally of photos that were submitted stands at a staggering 6,570 entries.

We are now in the process of sorting through the submissions to discard irrelevant entries (photos of other countries, satellite images, test submissions by staff etc). With this many entries the sorting is also taking a very long time.

We will then announce the judging process and the panel of judges.

Thank you for your patience.

Tonight at 12am, we closed photo submissions for the 350 Postcards from the Frontline after 7 exciting days of almost continuous photo contributions from people in all corners of the country.

The team behind this project thanks everyone for their contributions and the tremendous support they have given this project.

So here’s the tally so far:

Photos received online: 4,725

Photos received via email: Over 200 (this is an approximate figure)

Photos received on CD / pen drive: unknown (as we have to process and enter them into the database)

Number of people that contributed: Over 660 (a final tally will include email and CD submissions)

Average number of photos per person: 6

Most number of photos submitted by an individual: 131

We will now begin sorting through the photos and getting them ready for the judging process. We will also shortly announce the list of judges and the process of judging.

Once again, thank you, and keep an eye on this website because now the real fun begins.

This autumn, as we speed towards Copenhagen, an almost infinite number of words will be spilled about the environment, the atmosphere, the climate, the horror. I’m pretty much all in favour of this – last year, for instance, I edited a massive doorstop of an anthology called American Earth for the Library of America. It collected America’s single greatest literature – the stories of the encounter between people and nature – from Thoreau through Muir through Rachel Carson through the amazing bloom of contemporary environmental writers: Rick Bass, Terry Tempest Williams, the incomparable Wendell Berry. I’m proud to have played some small role in that flood of words myself: The End of Nature, when it came out in 1989, was the first book for a general audience about climate change, and since then I’ve gone on to write a dozen more.

But right now –this autumn, with much on the line – I’ve put my faith not in letters but in numbers. In digits, in Arabic numerals.

Read Bill McKibben’s article at the Guardian