500px alternative? Looking for good online portfolio/gallery service/website

<p>Hello, I am looking to get any feedback from the community regarding potential alternatives to sites like 500px and Flickr. While I'm familiar with both, I dislike both for their own reasons (500px is far too popularity-based now, and Flickr, well...Flickr just outright sucks) and am struggling to find a comparable alternative. I am willing to pay an annual or subscription fee to use such a service, I do not expect good things to always be free. I did have a PRO account with 500px for about a year or so, and to be honest, I really, REALLY like how clean the 500px interface is...but I just absolutely cannot stand how the 500px community has shifted from being a place that showcases truly talented photographers and spectacular photographs to place where photo quality means next to nothing and instead hinges almost entirely upon groups of friends upvoting those same groups of friends' photos. I am not saying it's a nice feature - I think that to be able to vote/favourite photos is very neat. But what I don't like is how those numbers, whether high or low, are essentially forced down your throat at every available opportunity. In my experience, I have seen countless users who post photographs that are, in my opinion, mediocre at best - now, I realize that photographs are interpretive and subjective and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but that being said, I think we can all agree that there are a lot of photos that are best described as being "meh" but that somehow manage to get to the top of the charts or popular pages simply because they have a lot of friends or connections on the site who will vote for anything, regardless of whether it's actually a good photo or not. I am not a professional photographer and I certainly don't take photos that are in the 500px Prime calibre, but I have to admit that I think a lot of my photos are better than many of the photos that find their way to the top of the popular pages, simply because so many of those photos have not achieved that ranking based on anything to do with the merit or quality of the photo...simply put, 500px has turned into a giant popularity contest by the nature that you cannot disable or hide these "ratings" - I talked to one of their support representatives yesterday and asked if it was possible to somehow at least just hide the thing that gets attached to your profile that shows how many friends/likes/affection points you have...but was told that no, there is no way to hide this. From my perspective, it feels as though I am being punished because I am not willing to vote/favourite hundreds of mediocre photos in the hope that those users will return the favour. That seems totally ridiculous to me, but it is what it is. Phew, sorry about that anti-500px rant, haha.</p>

<p>My question is, does anyone know of any sites or services out there that offer something similar to what 500px offers (especially in terms of layout and design, particularly how clean/fluid/intuitive it is) but that doesn't have these silly popularity points? Attaching likes to a photo is one thing, and I'm not against that. But those numbers shouldn't be what's being in-your-face, it should be the photos that do that. I guess maybe I'm looking more for strictly a portfolio/gallery service, rather than a community. The community certainly provides a nice atmosphere, but this trend of doing whatever you can to amass likes, favourites, retweets, votes - whatever it may be - is getting way too out of hand for my liking. Call me old fashioned, but I just want something that looks clean where I can display my photos and be proud of them - not because thousands of people have clicked a button, but because it just looks good. Any helps or suggestions would be greatly appreciated! :)</p>

<p>I can't say I've tried everything out there, but I have tried 500px and flickr. I use flickr because some clients (I do shoot professionally) want the photos uploaded there and tagged. For my own site, however, I recently moved from a standard gallery builder (jalbum) to a CMS-based site using tumblr. There's a wide variety of themes you can use with tumblr that gives a lot of choice with appearance. You can also easily set up your own domain so that you don't even have to see what goes on with tumblr. I was surprised recently to find out that one of my photos had been "reblogged" a lot. The surprise was because I rarely look at the page in tumblr, just through my own domain.</p>

<p>If you want to look at what I've done with tumblr, it's <a href="http://bangbang.photo/">here</a>. I chose a very simple and clean theme because this is just a personal gallery, although some of the photos came from jobs. There are a few images that would be considered NSFW, just warning.</p>

<p>Paul,<br>

you could take a look at Smugmug. I never used Smugmug myself though I like their interface even more than 500px. As usually, there may be some pitfalls, depending on the nature of your photos: the site is known (and sometimes criticized) because of their 'family safe' policy. If you do not like such restrictions on content, Zenfolio is probably the best for you.</p>

<p>I built my site using weebly. You can build a site up to and including 10 pages for free, though I went beyond that so pay something like $47 per year. I did go through their tutorial, but it's not 'rocket science.' Good luck.</p>

<p>500px really stinks now- uit was ok before- although like you the whole popularity thing kinda stunk- but was tolerable- now however, with their most recent design change, they cram your photos down at the bottom of your portfolio page, cut them off, with a huge ugly wasted space at the top now- then you click on a photo and they have crammed all the info for the photo beside the photo now- it looks awful, and now they are displaying OTHER people's photos on YOUR portfolio</p>

<p>I asked htem about it and they basically told me to lump it- "all sites change with itme" and so I went into their forums and noticed that many many people were complaining- more people every day were complaining- and for weeks we got no response from the leadership- then we got a canned lame excuse- and next thing I know they deleted the whole forum- I asked them why and got another lame excuse</p>

<p>500px is the most unprofessional website I've ever had the4 misfortune of signing up to- I waited for years for them to get through their growing pains- with one broken update after another- and when they finally get a design that looks and functions ok- they decide- nope- not going to keep it- and they begin cramming OTHER people's photos onto our portfolio pages- WE pay for the site- we should not be forced to display other people's photos- and when we pay for a photo site to display Our photos- our photos should be front and center- not crammed at the bottom of the page and cut off just so the site can jam social networking crap into the headers of the portfolio, and when people complain about the change, the leadership should be professional enough to address the people and not simply delete the forum so that the public can't see that people are upset about the change</p>

<p>I'm done with 500px- their attitude sucks and they are immature and unprofessional! I know of no pro who would want to pay for a site only to have OTHER people's photos displayed on their portfolio- who in their right mind thought that would be a good idea? Unreal! Apparently they no longer care what their paying customers want and are simply interested in selling- hence why they are forcing OTHER people's photos onto our portfolios- and they apparently are now too lazy to fix the other design flaws and so they are now just ignoring the people's complaints and suggestions.</p>

<p>I really tried to like the site- I was patient through Lots of growing pains- endured one broken design update after another- and said nothing- then they started shoving the horrible social networking crap on us- and it started to become apparent the direction they were going in- I had hoped I was wrong- but this latest design update, and their lack of concern about their paying customer's reaction just shows me they aren't worth bothering with any longer-</p>

<p>Anyways- try viewbug.com they run contests as well, and have a pretty good amount of people on the site- The contests usually have several hundred to thousand entries, so it can be hard to get recognized In the contests, as the photos get buried pretty quick pack a few pages- but all in all they are a pretty good site- however they do have the like and award system- but I simply ignore it- You can also try pbase- or 1x.com- not my favorite setups for a photo site- but they have a good amount of people on them- haven't checked out dpchallenge.com but they run contests too-</p>

<p>I too am looking for an alternative, and if I find a great one i'll post here-</p>

<p>Hi guys, first off, full disclosure I am not a photographer but a software developer, I stumbled upon this thread while researching 500px. I have been actively developing www.salon.io a website builder specifically aimed at photographers, artist, and creative professionals. <br />Is this something you would consider using? I am asking because I wondering whether it would make sense to incorporate sharing and voting features in a product like this, on the one hand it is nice to have a completely stand alone portfolio and platform unencumbered by the pitfalls of popularity contests that you hinted at, on the other hand it is nice to engage with like minded people and receive feedback.<br />I would be very much obliged if you guys could share your thoughts.<br>

Cheers :)</p>

<p>Well not crazy about the nudity on the front page- and would like to see some kind of feedback from viewers- not necessarily a popularity feature, but more of a feedback system/comment system<br>

If you want a winning design, create something like 500px had BEFORE their latest crappy design change- The developers there are refusing to listen to the large amount of complaints about the new design, because they want to attract more snapshooters and weekend photographers because they apparently weren't making enough money off of professionals because professionals were dropping out of the site them ore amateurs that came in- so now 500px is evidently courting amateurs-<br>

The 500px design was a winning design 10 months ago or so- before their latest design change- it was clean, easy to use, looked great- uncluttered- and it showed the photos front and center-<br>

I really think that if a site were to crop up that creates a site like 500px used to be, and was geared towards more professional photographers, semi-pros, and serious amateurs, it would attract a pretty good following, but would take some time to make it well known- You could advertise it like "What 500px should have been" or something lol </p>