I recently joined the National Geographic Your Shot site, where all members can submit to the pool of images in the hopes that theirs will be picked up by one of the editors and published online and in the magazine. Occasionally National Geographic puts up an Assignment where members can contribute with 3 of their images fitting the theme/story, so far I have posted images for two assignments, the assignment pool is then curated by one of several National Geographic photographers. The assignment is then later run as a story online, maybe even in the magazine, but I have yet to make the cut.

Assignment - Love Snap

Window to the World She Prefers Analog Skate on a School Day

Assignment - Biodiversity

The Italian Dung Beetle House of Spit Fly in the Middle

More Quantity then Quality

It seems that the pool is being used in the same manor as Flickr, so there is more quantity than quality. They limit the maximum number of images that one member can contribute during a week to 15 images to hinder people from taking advantage of this. In my opinion this number could be lowed to something like 7 in a week because it would force the members to be a bit more critical and selective with their work, potentially changing the quantity to quality ratio.