On Photo Sharing (1)

In these posts (this is the first part), I want to put down my thoughts on online photo sharing of the past couple of days and weeks after joining Google+, and the past couple of months after joining and then mostly abandoning 500px, and all that.

A couple of months ago, I was all enthusiastic about 500px and recommended others to meet Shuwen and me there. I'm sorry about that. I have to admit that my enthusiasm was curbed more or less quickly after realizing that it is necessary to spend a lot of time on the site socializing with others, hoping to draw enough attention to my photos so that they would be voted up by fellow photographers, so that they would maybe end up at the top of the "Popular" section on the site.

Looking at that behavior now I can't help but say: oh boy, that was stupid! I mean... what exactly do I gain from being at the top of the Popular section at 500px? From my point of view, it's safe to say: almost nothing. I explained what's really going on with the voting system on 500px already so there's no need to go into great details for that.*

And I don't regret buying the "Awesome" option, because it allowed me to quickly and easily create a good looking Portfolio page. [however, my enthusiasm for that aspect of 500px was curbed too when I recently realized that almost three months had passed already after Oleg Gutsol's promise that the FotoMoto store would be enabled in the portfolios "in the nearest future". Well... given the happenings around the Dislike button, I'm tempted to say that they're still living in the past, so waiting for the "nearest future" could take some more time. ;-) Just a side note.]

Back to online photo sharing in general.

Photographer of internet fame Thomas Hawk has made the claim that "Flickr is dead" in one of his latest blog posts. I go further than that. I say that any kind of site specialized on photo sharing is dead - dead for you, once you made the same realization that I made. Read on to find out what I mean.

I ask myself today: what good is it to spend my time on sites specialized on photo sharing as a photographer, socializing with other photographers? I mean, unless you're offering photo workshops or organizing photo tours and want to attract some potential customers with beautiful examples of your results and locations (which I'm not), and you do not have earned a name like Thom Hogan (who can get away with a website that doesn't even offer an RSS feed;) ... it's kind of a limited audience, no?

And somewhat related to that are the social activities and features on "sales platforms" (like Artflakes, ImageKind and RedBubble). I mean... the actual users on these sites are all artists that want to sell their work. If it's not for your own viewing pleasure, why would you start following someone there, leaving comments, adding likes, favorites, that sort of thing? How much time are you willing to spend on all that?

Conclusion: as a photographer, no matter on which level you are, it doesn't make any sense to share your photos on specialized photo sharing websites any more. Especially not today, as these sites become more and more overcrowed, and especially not if you're a beginner, and/or new to the site (like Flickr or 500px).

As a photographer, no matter if you're a beginner enthusiast or a seasoned professional, you are looking for an audience that is looking at your photos and gives you feedback, right? (more on the feedback aspect later, in the 2nd part of this post). Is that audience other photographers only, as it is the case on Flickr and 500px? Other artists, like on Artflakes, ImageKind, RedBubble? Or shouldn't that audience better be composed of a mixture of all kinds of people? I guess you know the answer. :)

In the past, the way to reach a broader audience probably was a personal website or a photo blog. But there's the problem of reach and distribution. How do you get people to notice your website? Today, that way is social media for sure. By that, I mean Facebook and Google+. By sharing photos with your friends, and have them maybe re-sharing your content, you can multiply your reach. People are still interested in photos and photography! :)

Flickr, 500px, Artflakes, RedBubble, ImageKind are networking platforms for photographers and artists. But how much networking do you really need? Can't you do that on the more general social networking platforms like Facebook and Google+ just as well? And the answer is yes of course.

So... by sticking to the "classic" photo sharing services, you're sticking to a system of the past with a limited reach and audience. Why would you do that? I don't know... and that's why I decided to stop wasting my time on these sites.

I want to close this first post on the topic with some numbers. I simply use "the good old photo" ;) entitled "Ask the Mountains" again because it's been relatively successful on both 500px and Google+ (I dare say that, one month after uploading, the "success" of a photo upload is over for the most part).


(NB: the images that appear in both this and older blogposts are a separate uploads, views do not affect the viewcounter of the public images on 500px and Google+ and I do not link to them here directly to avoid too many "extra views").

It was uploaded to 500px on May 30th 2011 and as of writing this (almost 3 months after uploading), it had accumulated 2084 views - it rose to the second place of the Popular section for a short while after it was featured in their "Daily Fresh" photo blog on Live Journal.

I also uploaded this photo on Google+, on July 21st 2011, and today (after 30 days), it has accumulated 2657 views ...and it was not featured anywhere.

Another example would be the "Barrel Roll", an experimental photo:



Uploaded to 500px March 27th 2011, views until today: 116
Uploaded to Google+ on August 7th 2011, views until today: 4803. (featured as "photo of the day by Brian Rose, Google+ Photos community manager)

Any questions?

More to come in part 2. Stay tuned. :)

PS: join the discussion of this post on Google+.

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*) the 500px staff has decided to remove my idea submission "Get rid of the Dislike button" from the GetSatisfaction support forum after it received more votes than any other idea submitted and more than 100 replies.