Those of you who are approaching 100 may recall that I started photo.net back in 1993. It started out as a place for people to learn from tutorials (example: Making Photographs) and engage in a text-based discussion of technique- and gear-related issues (there was no Trump v. Hillary campaign at the time to consume 100 percent of Internet users’ attention). In the late 1990s we added a photo sharing system that let people show off their best work and/or get feedback on attempted great work. I spun off the site in late 1999 to some grad school friends who had a plan to surf the dotcom wave with photo.net as a base, but instead they were pounded into the sand when the market collapsed.
Continuing the occasional theme of this blog of “What is the point of the Internet if we have Facebook?” I am wondering if there is still a place for online communities for photographers and, if so, what the main purpose would be. Gearheads seem to post a lot of comments on the articles at dpreview.com. Is this sustainable, though? If you care about photo quality a little you would presumably buy either the latest iPhone or the latest Samsung, If you care a little more you buy a Sony mirrorless such as the A6300 and leave it on green idiot mode or maybe kick it into “sports” mode as the occasion requires. How many people are there for whom anything further is required these days?
How about showing off one’s best work? If the audience is on Facebook, why display photos anywhere else? Admittedly most people have only 500 or so Facebook friends, but isn’t it possible to mark a posting as available to the public and then a great photo can get more widely shared on Facebook?
Discovering the best work of other photographers? That seems like something that is hard to do on Facebook.
What do folks think? The things that people accomplished with photo.net in the 1990s… what’s the most popular way of accomplishing those things now? And is there a long-term place for niche online communities such as photo.net and, in particular, niche online communities for photography enthusiasts? (If the answer to the latter is “yes”, to what extent is it required to tie in with Facebook, e.g., for user authentication and maybe to users’ public content from Facebook?)
I learned a lot about photography from photo.net. Especially, I learned a lot from your articles, Philip, and then the forums were very useful in filling in any gaps.
I personally like having a large collection of photographs publicly-accessible online. I doubt that many people would go browse my collection, but I can easily pull up a link to something from five years ago and share it. I currently use Flickr for this — although that may change soon, depending on what Yahoo/Verizon does — and storing your entire public photo collection was never really a main feature of photo.net.
Sharing your best work with your Facebook friends may be fine, if the resulting feedback is what you want. I think getting feedback from other photographers is probably more useful (or at least usefully different) than getting feedback from non-photographers. A non-photographer might tell me “Great shot!” while a photographer might tell me “Good shot! If you had used a neutral-density filter, you could have held the shutter open longer, and would have gone further toward getting the effect you were after.” Or whatever.
I do personally know a some photographers, so I might get some feedback like that on Facebook, but I think it more likely to happen on a dedicated site.
Unless I happen to be looking pictures from a photographer friend, most pictures on Facebook probably aren’t that inspiring. Whereas, nearly every picture I saw on photo.net made me feel like I still had lots to learn. And fortunately, there was usually some path toward learning that, right there on the site.
I started a blog almost 10 years ago and stuck with it and have built a readership. I would not recommend starting a photo blog today, however, because it’s too hard to attract the eyeballs, and harder still to get shared a lot on Facebook. It’s easier to get shared on something you wrote originally *on* Facebook, or at least that has been my experience. But I don’t like giving my words and photos to Facebook. I prefer to host them all myself. (Or rather, let WordPress.com do it for me, knowing I can export at any time.)
As for the forums, I’ve tried several of them and gave up. In trying to find good work from photographers, I still rely on Flickr.
ps. Long ago your article about recommended digital cameras led me to buy a Kodak Z730, which turned out to be great for that time and served me well for many years. I still get it out sometimes and use it because I love its color palette. Thanks, Philip!
Many years ago, Flickr used to be a gathering place for photo enthusiasts to post photos and look at photos from others. But it’s fallen out of favor and no major alternatives have arisen. Perhaps 500 pix, maybe? As far as gear goes, there are a number of popular sites.
I believe Facebook automatically compresses all uploaded photos, often by a lot, which seems like it would discourage a serious photographer community. At the very least you would need some other place to host the photos to be discussed….
I also learned a lot from photo.net when I was getting into photography in college (1997-2001), so thank you for building it.
I still recommend to people who can afford one get an entry level DSLR over a point-and-shoot or prosumer/mirrorless camera due to the fast focus and nearly-instantaneous shutter release response time, compared to other camera types.
I got into birding about five years ago and the need for big, heavy lenses and DLSR features hasn’t gone away in that particular hobby.
As far as Facebook goes, when I first got on Facebook in 2004/5-ish (back when you still needed a college email address to get on; it’s been all downhill from then!), it was a great photo-sharing platform, because they hadn’t started manipulating/tuning what gets shown in your feed, so if I posted a bunch of pictures, it seems that pretty much all of my friends at the time would see them. These days, unless I tag people in the photos I post, nobody sees them. So Flickr and/or photo.net remain better platforms for sharing a portfolio to people who are also serious about the hobby.
Facebook is an evil walled garden. If you want to share your work or experiences, much better to work with the public at large.
Using a dedicated site is like opening an app in a fullscreen – making sure your content is displayed without any unnecessary framing.
(Also, not everyone uses Facebook, quite a lot of people in Germany in fact).
I started reading photo.net around 1995 when I entered grad school, and followed it almost daily for 8- 10 years. So a big Thanks to Phil for all the free entertainment.
Gradually I moved away from Photo.net, however, for several reasons: 1) no timely review of new gear; 2) no way to post images in a thread except in the dedicated picture forum; 3) too many posts by novices.
I also follow two very successful, large photo forums in China as I was from there. I still follow one of them as my spare time becomes less and less. So here’s my view of what is needed for a photography forum to be a long term success:
1) A dedicated core of 50~100 excellent photographers, each given moderator authority over a “channel” or thread of their own; these photographers have the authority and responsibility to discover and nominate new “master photographers”; these people, by their technical excellence, artistic skill and knowledge, will attract followers;
2) Reward work and dedication: Core photographers should profit from their work of posting to the site, similar to youtube rewarding based on subscribers;
3) Must be able to post pictures in any thread, in any sub-forum. Photos are photographer’s language. It’s amazing how many photo forums still fail to do this;
4) Must be able to curb the onslaught of novice dash-cam or cell phone photos: photographers are given rankings, and only allowed to post more pix per month after reaching a higher ranking. Moderators of a thread can delete any photo; be merciless toward spammers and trolls and posters who are always negative;
5) Keep it fresh: everybody go through a phase where new gear and photography seems less interesting. One way is to add an activity component: allow clubs to form by city/region. Organize activities at very low cost to build camaraderie. That’s how I discovered studio photography, BTW. So much fun and more technical than just snapping away during vacation trips;
6) Include a general discussion sub-forum, yes, including politics: again to keep the camaraderie going, you need some diversions too. Some entrepreneurs, executives and college professors are also top photographers. Give them a place to discuss, educate or discover other curious stuff and show off their other life skills beyond photography.
Photo.net was the only place a silicon valley programmer from 2000-2012 could see what women looked like, let alone world class models. Youtube, the mobile app boom & the arrival of a new generation of 20 year olds chasing buyout offers changed that slightly, but by then, they were half our age. Nowadays, photo.net is just about dead. The hot models are all gone.
There is no feed of hot models on facebook like photo.net. You can search for hotties with public photos or photographers with public photos, but they’re rare. Photographers would rather upload photos of their kids.
Have been a member of photo.net, dpreview, and other online photo communities. When we launched Stunning Digital Photography in 2011, we wanted a community just for the readers. We set up two: sdpcommunity.com (an old-school forum site) and a private Facebook group.
Five years later, the Facebook group has 21,000 users, and we’ve shut down sdpcommunity.com.
Existing communities will continue to function, but new photographers are already on Facebook, so they’ll get notifications. Facebook has an amazing codebase, including mobile apps, for viewing and sharing photos/videos, receiving notifications, and messaging other users. Most people already have a username and password, so they don’t need to create and manage a new account.
Thanks, Tony. I just applied to join your group on Facebook. It looks like someone has to approve each new member. You’ve delegated that to Admins? And then you kick out anyone who repeatedly posts deadly boring photos of young children? (i.e., I would be gone within a week?)