Love and hate? How do you feel about Flickr and other pro photographer sites?

[clara_liu]

<p>Vent all you awesome pro-photographers!<br /><br />What do you guys love and hate about Flickr and other sites for sharing your work? Love to hear any opinions or stories!</p>

[leslie_cheung]

<p>Indifference for me but it seems like you care a lot as you just signed up today to hear others "vent." So, why don't you start "venting" first?</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>Context, please.</p>

[Damon DAmato]

<p>Flickr is dying. Participation in the forums has slowed to a trickle. <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=yahoo+lays+off+flickr&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a">Yahoo is laying off staff hand over fist</a>.</p>

[Spearhead]

<p>I know almost no pros on flickr. And that goes back to the beginning.</p>

 

[clara_liu]

<p>I meant like the interface... as a photographer, I want to create something new for phorographers, by photographers to showcase our work/share/ whatever you like to do.</p>

<p>I find Flickr too cramped. and I get distracted by all this crap that's on the site :/</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Who can recommend other sites for pros and amateurs?</p>

[joshroot]

<blockquote>

<p>I meant like the interface... as a photographer, I want to create something new for phorographers, by photographers to showcase our work/share/ whatever you like to do.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Ah, so you've come onto this photo site to gather marketing research for a photo site you wish to start.</p>

<p>Subtle.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>I agree that something is... ohh, what's the word for it? Oh, fudge... I don't know. Words are hard. I can best express myself in the form of <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IybUFPimw_I">interpretive dance</a>.</p>

[joshroot]

<p>That was a really weird 1 minute 41 seconds, Lex.</p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>Doing market research on this site will only result in a site just like this. :-) </p>

<p>I recall FedEx giving guided tours to many of its competitors including UPS, DHL, Emery, Purolator, even USPS whose inefficiency was a catalyst to Fred Smith starting FedEx. There's enough room in the world for another photo site and everyone's entitled to risk a disproportionately high failure rate to try. </p>

[DWScott]

<p>Lex, I always thought you had a great sense of humour, but you've topped yourself! That was awesome :-)</p>

[dhbebb]

<p>My thoughts:<br>

1) As others have said, Flickr is not a pro photography site.<br>

2) For me personally, as a retired pro still taking photographs for fun, putting pictures on Flickr is like burying them in an unmarked hole in the middle of the desert.</p>

[cabbiinc]

<blockquote>

<p>Flickr is dying. Participation in the forums has slowed to a trickle.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It's funny, I find myself going on Flickr far more often than Photo.net because it's really slowed down here in the last year or so. I'd say it's slowed everywhere actually.</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>Flickr. Those guys can't even spell. They've had their 5 minutes of fame. </p>

<p>Next.</p>

[pjmeade]

<p>I've found a number of useful things about Flickr<br>

Firstly is how easily material can be found by people who want to buy photos. This is facilitated by by their tag system which adds keywords in the exif data as tags. After photographing an event, I'll always add a few photos to flickr that carry a link to the gallery in my web site. I look on this as a belt and braces approach to being found. I've sold a fair number of photos to ad agencies, publishers, banks and people through flickr<br>

Then there is the Getty images involvement, get spotted sell photos<br>

Each photo has a tweet (and facebook button), so it's very simple to share them in that way. Taken in combination with a good twitter strategy, that helps raise your profile and can put you in touch with helpful people.<br>

The downside of flickr for me, is creative commons. People have become used to looking there for creative commons photos and are used to just sticking therm on their web site. I recently had an email exchange with a travel web site who used one of my show jumping photos to illustrate an article about a local race course (that runs only flat races), their excuse was they thought it was CC. And that wasn't the first case like that.</p>

[David_Cavan]

<p>Lex - you must have some kind of "find me weird stuff" script. That was the BEST. It is an absolute classic. </p>

<p>Now what were we talking about before that happened? Oh yeah...Flickr. Great place to lose your grandchildren photos. Very much an electronic version of the shoebox up in the closet.</p>

[marc_rochkind]

A site that can spell: SmugMug.

[ilkka_nissila]

<p><em>it's really slowed down here in the last year or so.</em></p>

<p>I have noticed that, it's been going on for a number of years now. I believe the hostile attitude of many regulars to newcomers (aptly demonstrated in this thread) and general grumpiness to anything but established way of doing things drives people away from here. A lot of photographers that I know personally don't even think about participating on discussions here because of this attitude. Dpreview is more open to opinions and discussion on gear and the volume of discussion is much greater, but the quality of discussion is often low (including some profanity etc. and really low level comments) because of lack of, or very limited moderation, but because of the greater volume, there is also some good information which you cannot find here.</p>

<p>On photo.net there are also a lot of technique, philosophy, and some subject specific forums ... but again there is a strong resistance to new ideas or alternative approaches and people who dare to propose something that isn't a totally established approach (especially on forums where some professionals specializing in a type of photography frequent) get a lot of heat for it even if the technique is perfectly valid and yields good results but is not part of how "the pros do it [say the regulars]". To get more discussion and activity, I think photo.net should replace some of the moderators with people who are open to new ideas rather than "there is only one correct way of doing things and that's mine". But perhaps photo.net likes itself like it is, with only a few threads of interest per day instead of 100.</p>

<p>Flickr (for me) is just for sharing pictures with people who do not want to get involved with people on photo.net or dpreview.com. Flickr is more friendly and comments posted don't have a generally hostile "fight about everything" attitude. Also it's easy to find pictures on topic by doing a search there. I find images on flickr to be more about normal photography, lighting etc. whereas photo.net gallery images tend to be more about heavy post-processing, over-simplified compositions, and unnatural looking graphic arts (top rated gallery certainly). So I almost never view images on photo.net gallery or top rated pages because I don't care about the look. Photo.net has some nice photo discussion threads which show what's going on around the world at a given time though, and these I do sometimes follow. But for images I generally go elsewhere. For technique topics and problem solving photo.net is very good, provided that you are willing to develop a very thick eskimo skin. It takes quite a while for people here to accept that you know something about what you're doing ... and if you dip into another forum where you're not a frequent poster you start that process all over again.</p>

<p>But like I said, if you have a technique or equipment problem, photo.net is a good place to search for a solution. Flickr is in my opinion a better site to casually share images with other people at different levels of involvement in photography; because the focus there is on images the gearhead discussions are minimal, and so it's more suitable for viewing by normal people. But for presentation of professional images making your own website is much better as you get to completely control the look and the presentation.</p>

<p> </p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>Ilkka, I think photo.net recognizes that it can not be all things to all people and has stuck to its founding philosophy through the years, and in so doing, it has also differentiated itself from others.</p>

<p>Every photography related site has its strengths and weaknesses, but its sum-total means there's something out there for everyone; where ever you might feel comfortable enough to park yourself. There are good reasons why the White House and NASA have opened Flickr accounts and not here, but that only means one site is more suited to a particular need than another.</p>

<p>Diversity can only enhance the totality, and if the OP gets another site off the ground which will offer something new and different, good for them because that's what innovation and progress is about.</p>

[jenkins]

<p>I liken Flickr to a dog and a fire hydrant. I like 500px because there is some very good work on there but comments wise it's just like Flickr and you still have people uploading 15 pictures of their poodle because they can't decide which is the best one.</p>

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>I think photo.net should replace some of the moderators with people who are open to new ideas rather than "there is only one correct way of doing things and that's mine"</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br />This is a complete misunderstanding of what moderators do at photo.net. Moderators don't choose what ideas get discussed and not discussed. </p>

[joshroot]

<p>And to be clear, moderators do not choose photo.net policies, I do. Anything that happens on photo.net, the responsibility stops with me.</p>

<p>So if there is a specific policy or way of doing things that you feel should be changed or updated, I am always happy to listen. That having been said, those discussions do not need to happen in the forums. Historically, policy discussions have always spiraled down into attacks and harassment. there are people with chips on their shoulders who tend to appear out of nowhere simply to derail those sort of discussions. I have changed many things about photo.net in the time I've been running the site. Many of those changes came because people took the time to write and lay out a clear reason for a change. I have never changed anything about the site simply because someone tried to attack or embarrass the site or those who run it by. As would most of you, I find that tends to make me less likely to care what someone says.</p>

<p>Anyone who has something to say about photo.net and what they think would be an improvement or an important change should send me email via the "contact us" link at the bottom of the page. I get a lot of email and I may be a little slow on the reply. But I do reply to everyone who writes, even the angry ones. I may not agree with you, but I will listen and reply.</p>

[sarah_fox]

<p>Clara, my big complaint about many venues is the ownership and control of content. I don't know specifically about Flickr, but many/most sites have terms of use that give the site some usage rights to your photos and verbal content, beyond simply the right to display them as posted by the creator of the content. Therefore there is a reluctance on my part to give ownership or control of my intellectual property to anyone else, even on a temporary basis. While I may be a bit more stringent than most people on this point, I know that there are many photographers who won't enter contests, for instance, that give the organizer rights to the submitted photographs. So my advice to you, in your new venture, is to be respectful of the creators of your content, and don't get greedy with usage rights.</p>

[georg_s1]

<p>Thanks, Ilkka, my thoughts exactly.<br>

Flickr is right now unbeatable if someone wants to find a wide variety of images for given theme or technique (search for „tri-x rodinal” or „summarit portrait” here and there as an example) and it's more fun to discover the work of others over there. <br>

I don't care if more „pros” are here or there or elsewhere.</p>

<p> </p>