# Photography websites. Where are you posting?



## picturesbyme (Nov 17, 2012)

Besides my site I recently posted some on youpic: http://youpic.com/#!/user/AtlanticPicture
and of course the social sites like facebook http://www.facebook.com/AtlanticPicture
and vk.com http://vk.com/atlanticpicture which is way better than fb, but I'm looking forward to learn about other ones.

Show your work! Where do You post? 
Which site/s you like (or don't ) and why?

Thanks.


----------



## sootzzs (Nov 17, 2012)

I was actually thinking of asking the same question but as a complete beginner who just looks to get constructive critique. Facebook is not exactly that. Not for me at least. Flickr??? 

Your photos are amazing btw. Your choices of light and exposure are aspiring for me. And the models are not that bad also .


----------



## MRLinVA (Nov 17, 2012)

You should check out www.Viewbug.com. It has various memberships including a free option. They have theme-based contests that you can enter (!20 at any given time). And you get a fair amount of feedback.


----------



## picturesbyme (Nov 17, 2012)

Thank you 
I was thinking of flickr but not fan of the ui.
Maybe http://500px.com/ .. ?

Viewbug is interesting too.

Is there a site were you can overview all the photo pages and upload to all, or that's the future... ?


----------



## dirtcastle (Nov 17, 2012)

500px has the better interface, and overall higher caliber of photos. But I still prefer the community at Flickr for some reason. Flickr seems more casual than 500px.


----------



## sleepnever (Nov 18, 2012)

All of my photos that I post are on Flickr. Only a few are on 500px, but that's only because I don't want to post in several different places. I post my extra favorites to 500px for more exposure, but even then its few and far between.

I recently read that there is quite a community on Google+ of all places.


----------



## Waterloo (Nov 18, 2012)

I have some of my photos online at www.photoshop.com. It's free and there is a publish plugin for Lightroom.

http://www.photoshop.com/products/photoshoplightroom/photoshopdotcom-plugin


----------



## friedmud (Nov 18, 2012)

All of my photos go to Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/friedmud/

My best / favorite go to 500px: http://500px.com/friedmud

Both sites are useful for different purposes. Flickr is a great place for my family to look at vacation photos. 500px is a great place to explore my photography hobby as an art form.


----------



## vargyropoulos (Nov 18, 2012)

I'm also of the opinion that Flickr is better for putting up sets of photos (family vacations, photoshoot samples, etc). I have not interacted too much with the Flickr community so I can't comment on how constructive the criticism is.

I recently started posting on 500px (http://500px.com/VasilisArgyropoulos) and although the vast majority of comments/votes/"faves" are made with an anticipation of a reciprocal vote, I have received enough honest feedback that it has helped me improve my skills. I am not crazy about the anonymous "dislikes" since I have seen amazing photos getting flagged with dislikes just so that their scores would lower and bump the photo down the ranks.


----------



## The Lemonator (Nov 18, 2012)

I prefer flickr. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]


----------



## picturesbyme (Nov 18, 2012)

Awesome pictures Everyone.
Keep it coming  

Photoshop.com looks interesting too.


----------



## nightbreath (Nov 18, 2012)

I'm not sure why you've chosen vk.com, as its main audience is Russian-speaking, and most of registered people are teenagers. The reason it works for me is that I live in the area and I'm a wedding photographer, so it's about time for some of them to get marry 

I believe that every photography-related community has specific photography segment that it may be mainly specialized at. So it's up to us to identify what fits our needs


----------



## picturesbyme (Nov 18, 2012)

nightbreath said:


> I'm not sure why you've chosen vk.com, as its main audience is Russian-speaking, and most of registered people are teenagers. The reason it works for me is that I live in the area and I'm a wedding photographer, so it's about time for some of them to get marry
> 
> I believe that every photography-related community has specific photography segment that it may be mainly specialized at. So it's up to us to identify what fits our needs



Simple, my girlfriend is from Ukraine  (ZP)
VK has a great English translation so language isn't a problem and the site in general is light years better (for our taste) than fb.

Not sure about that user info.. according to their data: Audience
Over 190 million users are registered on the site.
Around 2 500 000 000 pages are opened daily (LiveInternet).
Around 67% of visitors live in Russia (LiveInternet).
*More than 70% of users are over 25 years old (comScore).*

Love your work.


----------



## nightbreath (Nov 18, 2012)

picturesbyme said:


> Simple, my girlfriend is from Ukraine  (ZP)
> VK has a great English translation so language isn't a problem and the site in general is light years better (for our taste) than fb.
> 
> Not sure about that user info.. according to their data: Audience
> ...


We're from DP, 2 hours away 

As for VK, I feel that people over 25 don't visit the web-site that often, compared to younger people. Audience is interested in something extraordinary these days, so to please them pictures should really stand out of the crowd.

We've got interesting results during this year wedding season, so I'll add you to my friends list in VK to share those as soon as we have time to upload them 

You have very nice works too, but I believe there's always room for personal growth


----------



## nightbreath (Nov 18, 2012)

P.S. I didn't get the percentage of >25 years old correctly from the first sight, because my eyes just didn't believe that. I don't think that's true even now. My personal feeling says the visitors core is in the 17-25 years range.


----------



## wayno (Nov 18, 2012)

Flickr for a lot of things:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/

My Facebook page for particular highlights and other bits and pieces:

www.facebook.com/waynegrivellartandphotography

That's what I stick to at present...


----------



## Ellen Schmidtee (Nov 18, 2012)

I find that facebook is a good place to post photos I want to share with family, friends, and bands I shoot, and many of them follow me on facebook.

Bands don't follow me, but when tagged in the photos, they do notice it. The fans do to, and often tag themselves when in the frame.

I haven't posted photos on any site of the kind mentioned in the thread, but will probably do so in the near future.


----------



## Waterloo (Nov 18, 2012)

Ellen Schmidtee said:


> I find that facebook is a good place to post photos I want to share with family, friends, and bands I shoot, and.....



I've removed all my photos from facebook. I found it's too easy to steal from facebook and had issues with a "friend" who had copied some of my photos and posted them on her page and presented them as if she had taken them. All without my consent and no credit given. The security settings on my Photoshop.com albums are set to prevent copying and printing.


----------



## nightbreath (Nov 18, 2012)

Waterloo said:


> I've removed all my photos from facebook. I found it's too easy to steal from facebook and had issues with a "friend" who had copied some of my photos and posted them on her page and presented them as if she had taken them. All without my consent and no credit given. The security settings on my Photoshop.com albums are set to prevent copying and printing.


There's no way you can prevent copying and printing on internet. I'm familiar with dozen ways to protect your image and none of them work if someone is a professional in web-technologies.


----------



## Waterloo (Nov 18, 2012)

You are surely correct. But, with facebook it's a simple drag and drop of any photo.


----------



## Danielle (Nov 18, 2012)

I'm using primarily 500px. It's hard to actually get noticed though, not necessarily the very best photos get actively seen. But I like the site.

The other one other than Flickr that I have an account is 1X. That site has a curator system which you must pass your image through before its allowed on the site. It's an artistic site, very very hard to get images on there but the general quality of images are pretty high. I haven't tried for a while but a couple if my images failed to get through. I should try again.

At least with 500px and sites like 1x, you can't simply right click and steal images.


----------



## klems (Nov 18, 2012)

Blog http://klemsdal.blogspot.no/
Facebook example http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10151122911086380.457913.730476379&type=3


----------



## distant.star (Nov 18, 2012)

nightbreath said:


> There's no way you can prevent copying and printing on internet. I'm familiar with dozen ways to protect your image and none of them work if someone is a professional in web-technologies.



That is likely true, just as it's true for cars, houses, etc. Security comes in layers and just because you can't stop the one guy who can get through five layers, that shouldn't mean you don't put up any security at all. My experience of people using my images is that they know nothing about rights. The Internet appears to them as a free-for-all. When confronted, they learn something, and they stop doing it. Personally, my only real concern is that I don't lose rights that way. For me, and I suspect most of us, our pictures are not likely to be stolen and used to fund a new yacht for some cyber crook.

That said, back to the topic at hand...

After trying a few different hosting sites beginning a few years ago, I finally dropped just about everything except Smugmug. As I've often said here I take pictures only to satisfy myself so I don't care if anyone else looks at them or likes or dislikes them. Neither Smugmug nor I provide any promotion. It costs around $60 per year to get a lot of options; costs vary with service level. I can copy-protect on a gallery basis. I can make galleries public or not. I can share images in various ways. An activist group asked me to take some pictures at an event recently so I created an unlisted gallery (anyone with the URL can see it) with no copy protection. They can view and take/use the images for whatever they like. In such a case, I relinquish copyright; it's like my contribution to their cause. They also have nothing that limits me -- no file size limitations that might affect me and no bandwidth restrictions. I can link an image here, for instance, and within a day or so have thousands of views on that image.

Once in a while I'll post something to Flickr, but I've never cared a lot for it. The real value seems to be in the various groups. For example, I get to see some great pictures of great architecture in the Louis Kahn group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/louisikahn/

I don't have to contribute pictures to the group, but as a member I can contribute to conversations. If anyone is interested, by the way, I'm looking for pictures of the new Four Freedoms Park in New York City to be posted there. It was designed by Louis Kahn and just opened a few weeks ago. The photographic possibilities there seem awesome (a word I don't use as lightly as some). A lot of the groups I've seen at Flickr tend to have tens of thousands of members, some with hundreds of thousands of images -- so a lot of it seems real impersonal to me.

I've looked at, even participated in some of the more artsy sites -- Red Bubble, that 500 group that's been mentioned. I felt mainly lost and out of place there. Most photographers there are way out of my league.

For a while I contributed pictures and picture essays to the JPG Magazine site. It's largely amateurish in my opinion, and I didn't like the social media aspect of it -- a circle of "friends" all telling each other how magnificent their mostly mediocre images are. When management quashed something I published they did not like, we parted ways. The real loss for me was the ability to do photo essays, a form I like. I don't know anywhere else to do that.

Once in a while I'll post an image to FB if it helps some cause I'd like to advance. Most serious photographers I know don't like what FB does to their images (compression, etc.). For me, there's a lot to not like about FB.

Anyway, thanks for asking.


----------



## picturesbyme (Nov 18, 2012)

If there is a club who really doesn't like facebook (for boat load of reasons) I'm in 
They actively encouraging stealing photos. They even have a download button under the photos. 
It's bad to post on it (fb owns all content) and it's bad not to (due to its size).
So I think the less bad is to be on it.
As others said before there are ways to take an image even if the right click is disabled but low res images with watermark can help a little.
Of course the wm takes away a bit but on the long run it worth it as it brought me more visitors to my main site.


----------



## crasher8 (Nov 18, 2012)

Facebook is simple to lock down, however most folks don't take the time to figure it out. It's also popular and 'cool ' to hate on FB. You will find that there are strangers that are trying to friend you who you don't know and it may be due to your images. I check these folks pages out and it's usually a photo related thing.Just don't invite them in. Only be friends with people you actually know.Only share with friends. Upload medium to low rez with WM's. I love FB. It's an amazing way to stay in contact with friends from the past and out of town and share media. The security settings are not the most intuitive but they are there. Carry On (and shoot film)


----------



## picturesbyme (Nov 18, 2012)

crasher8 said:


> Facebook is simple to lock down, however most folks don't take the time to figure it out. It's also popular and 'cool ' to hate on FB.
> Carry On (and shoot film)



Wow, you can lock down FB? Please teach us. MZ will love to hear it too. 
I think it's more "cool" and popular to love fb than disliking it for its practices, TOS etc. but most folks don't take the time to read up on it or experiencing it.
The majority has the view of "If one can't see it, touch it, it's not there". 

Carry on and don't cross the road if... wait.. what?


----------



## crasher8 (Nov 18, 2012)

Wow, you can lock down FB? Please teach us. MZ will love to hear it too. 
I think it's more "cool" and popular to love fb than disliking it for its practices, TOS etc. but most folks don't take the time to read up on it or experiencing it.
The majority has the view of "If one can't see it, touch it, it's not there". 

Carry on and don't cross the road if... wait.. what? 


Schooled again by someone smarter than me!


----------



## picturesbyme (Nov 18, 2012)

Haha... 
So... you sent me an email personating MZ from fb and that should show what?
Nice.. :

Now, can we go back to the topic and see some good sites?


----------



## Ellen Schmidtee (Nov 19, 2012)

Waterloo said:


> Ellen Schmidtee said:
> 
> 
> > I find that facebook is a good place to post photos I want to share with family, friends, and bands I shoot, and.....
> ...



There's no way to secure photos posted on the web. One can always pull a copy of the photo out of the browser's cache, make a screenshot of the browser and crop the photo out of it, etc.


----------



## Nishi Drew (Nov 19, 2012)

Ellen Schmidtee said:


> Waterloo said:
> 
> 
> > Ellen Schmidtee said:
> ...



True, it's a question of whether or not you do/how you watermark. A small signature can get cropped out, sure, but it's that much more work to 'steal'


----------



## bycostello (Nov 19, 2012)

not a big fan of putting my work on 3rd party sites as it usually means i give away my copyright


----------



## RustyTheGeek (Nov 27, 2012)

I've used *zenfolio.com* for years.

Maintaining ownership and sometimes limiting access was important since I shoot a lot of boy scouts, church and school events, etc. I don't want an image in the public domain (end up on a news story, cereal box or billboard) because I gave away the rights through a terms and agreements clause when I posted the images on a free site. Most public and free sites take the rights away from you when you post.

You can also restrict Google search access, add temporary watermarks, secure the galleries or pictures, use passwords, etc.


----------



## Sunnystate (Nov 27, 2012)

Have account for years with Smugmug, but after experimenting using someone else computer in the near by city, and seeing my stats not reflecting the true counters, I have posted big watermarks and waiting to see any of my photos printed somewhere without permission.... maybe, I will get lucky...
And for the FB users, my God get to your senses...


----------



## Area256 (Nov 27, 2012)

I use both 500px, and Flickr.

Both have positives and negatives. 500px generally looks nicer, and cleaner. However, 500px comments seem to be mostly made to get attention - and the down-vote system seems to be harming the ranking algorithm - since less good stuff seems to be marking it to the front page. Having said that the ranking algorithm still works far far better than Flickr's "explore".

Flickr is great for groups, storing full resolution copies of images (worst cast backups), private photos, and it has a great API for integration into other sites. The comments you get on Flickr are generally better, but it's harder to get noticed.

Also maybe this is just me, but 500px seems to favour colourful saturated images of landscapes and women, and cares less about more subtle "artistic" photos. Where as you can find groups for those kind of photos on Flickr fairly easily. 

I've taken to using Flickr for general photo-sharing, and 500px for my better portfolio level images.


----------



## shutterwideshut (Nov 27, 2012)

Area256 said:


> I use both 500px, and Flickr.
> 
> Both have positives and negatives. 500px generally looks nicer, and cleaner. However, 500px comments seem to be mostly made to get attention - and the down-vote system seems to be harming the ranking algorithm - since less good stuff seems to be marking it to the front page. Having said that the ranking algorithm still works far far better than Flickr's "explore".
> 
> ...



+1 on that. Flickr is more wholesome but 500px is more presentable... Other photo sharing sites to consider are smugmug and pixoto.


----------



## monkey44 (Jan 27, 2018)

Tried various commercial sites over the years ... but was unhappy with the interaction, generally. So built my own site with help from a couple tech buddies (Me = low-tech  ) and am now installing images as I get time. It includes some of my travel work from various places too, which can't happen as easily - or at all - in some sites.

Some images are very old scans of film or slides, some cropped and modified, some direct from camera... I'll add to this content over the next couple months. Pretty minimal at the moment. 

Anyone wants a peek: www.billdelorey.com Any comments appreciated. You can also email us thru the site if you choose or have a question. It will eventually include photo tips, travel areas where we've been, and some other odd-ball things just to keep it interesting. We focus on wildlife habitat protection, and have several scientists overseeing our content, so we get it right.

FYI: Anyone with a small bit it IT knowledge can build a site - and cost is minimal. Just takes lots of time and patience. Doesn't need to become "fancy", the art and images are what makes it great. M44


----------

