Photography on the internet/social media

p.giannakis

p.giannakis

Pan Giannakis
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I hope I am not opening a controversial discussion - I just wanted to voice my experience/frustration with photography in social media.

I jumped on the internet back wagon around 2002 - there was a website called "Usefilm.com" back then, I don't know how many of you were part of it - it was very popular back then and when that started sinking I jumped into photo.net for a while. I liked the photos and the reviews but I found some of its forums to range from snappy to toxic. I left photo.net and joined a smaller photoforum called "photopoints.com". I quite enjoyed being part of that community until Flickr appeared.

So around 2007 I joined Flickr, the promise of a wider audience and different groups really appealed to me. Around that time I joined RFF and those two where the main forums for photography on the internet for me.

Flickr has been a dead horse for me for the last decade or so. With a slow interface and groups that range from over-moderated to open playgrounds, I used it mostly as a storage space over the last few years. It has been Facebook and Instagram that rose to power and I joined both. Instagram is an interesting beast, I still post there but it didn't manage to grab my attention-it is just an endless stream of pictures.

Facebook groups on the other hand promised a lot but in my case, delivered little. Groups grew exponentially in members making it difficult to moderate. It also exposed a (fatal?) flaw: with the younger generation of photographer wanting to learn to shoot film, the groups are more geared towards posting than searching current content. With time there is a constant repetition of the same questions over and over again: how do I load film in a camera? Is this a film camera? My film says 400asa but my camera 200asa - will it work? After some time I just lost my willingness to help. I admire John Hermanson who still after all those years he is still replying to Olympus questions.

Now I have snoozed most of the Facebook groups as I felt spammed by mediocre pictures and endless questions. The arrival of AI made things worse for me, I stopped posting in any groups. I find myself returning more and more to RFF and one more photography forum I am member of. And one watch forum. It is my view that if you want to learn more about photography, it is smaller forums like this that you need to join and participate in. That's my view, you might disagree.

Thank you for listening to my rant and chronic disappointment with social media.
 
Facebook is about advertising I got banned complaining, about a lousy lab. I NEVER mentioned address, name etc. The owner replied I was being unfair! I was banned!! Oh! Negatives under developed! Actual re- jet crap on my films, dirty, Awful scans.. OH! I tested a sister batch at another lab!
Instagram, if one has a large following, could earn $1000 a month! That's why all the links!
Facebook a miserable place, but a dirty water well better, than NO water!
 
Firstly, other than my own photography blog, I only participate in the RFF forum.

Secondly, when it comes to photography, I don’t need a second opinion; I don’t need another forum to share my stuff with, RFF is good enough for me. I trust myself, I have my vision, my style, I know what I want to photograph and that’s all that matters. Thankfully not everyone likes my style of photography. Being popular can be a burden. “Likes” are nice, but they don’t matter. Don’t chase “Likes” chase your vision. A good photograph without “likes" is still a good photograph.

Sharing one’s opinions and images at RFF can be enough of a challenge, sharing in multiple forums must be hell (in my opinion).

Sorry for rambling on like this; apparently rambling on is what I do best.

All the best,
Mike
 
I use RFF, Cameraderie, & Instagram as a place to post my pics so friends cans see them. It's free & most of them do have book of faces accounts anyway. It does compress the living snot out of them but it takes a fair bit of internet knowledge that most don't have to download from there so there is a small bit oof security too.

Beyond that? I can't get too excited one way or the other. I do think I may start a proper web site this fall but that's still up in the air.
 
We are living in the world of choice.

I like Flickr as something off the crowd and much more technical quality oriented than Instagram lowres dumpster.
I won't call it as social media at all. It is very technically oriented on-line storage with handy support of sharing, commenting and following.

Facebook photography groups... I feel like dealing with less intelligent, not gifted and clueless people.

RFF is the joy of intelligence in the opposite.
 
I never shared photos on the net until the last few years. Didn't know how. Didn't care. I like prints and how photos look on a piece of paper and nothing online really shows that. But when my second printer died I decided not to replace it. The fact is most of the people I shared photos with around the home area were my age or older and they've died off or moved away. So I really didn't have a reason to print anymore.

So I started posting more pictures here and I opened a Flickr account. I occasionally post on a couple of other forums but RFF is the one I use the most. RFF has more people doing the type of photos I like than any other site I've seen. Friendly people too. Other sites also have friendly people but RFF has friendly people with a large knowledge base and a willingness to share. And some damn fine photographers.
 
Ok, I take photographs because I like the process and the result(sometimes), I do not need a faceless person to judge my work. the only forum I am a member of is RFF, not to post any Photographs but mainly read the forums and learn.
Who needs some person pretending he is the god of the internet to tell me how s**t I am, I don't.
 
While there are negatives to posting your images online, there are positives as well. I meet people I would never meet and interact with people all over the world. I can see what all the book publishers are doing and what my favorite photographers are doing all in one place. It also allows me to see the types of photography that are being overdone etc. However, when it comes to forums, this one is still my favorite.
 
A Flickr account provides a good overview of your work. It's not a good site to show your work because it's a pile of work where the oldest part disappears; the older work simply doesn't get any attention anymore. However, you can reanimate the old part by deleting it and reposting it.

RFf is interesting because you get more comments on your work, but I find the site very chaotic. I don't understand its structure at all. It is based in part on the subjects of the work and in part on the technical nature of the work. That's confusing. Perhaps there should be more difference between the forums and the exhibition of work.

Erik.
 
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Erik van Straten said:
A Flickr account provides a good overview of your work. It's not a good site to show your work because it's a pile of work where the oldest part disappears; the older work simply doesn't get any attention anymore. However, you can reanimate the old part by deleting it and reposting it.

RFf is interesting because you get more comments on your work, but I find the site very chaotic. I don't understand its structure at all. It is based in part on the subjects of the work and in part on the technical nature of the work. That's confusing. Perhaps there should be more difference between the forums and the exhibition of work.

Erik.
Click to expand...

Nothing disappears from views if you paying small fee to Flickr.

I'm getting likes for photos posted years ago.
This one is from 2014, someone liked it eighteen days ago.

by Kostya Fedot, on Flickr

Photos on Flickr are often getting browsed via looking at photos in the groups or via tags. It is not important how old photo is.
 
Erik van Straten said:
It's not a good site to show your work because it's a pile of work where the oldest part disappears; the older work simply doesn't get any attention anymore.
Click to expand...
You can mitigate this problem to some extent by posting your photos in groups and albums. Some of my albums are more than 10 years old and still attract visitors.
 
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I know that nothing disappears from Flickr, what I wanted to say is that people don't want to see the older work on Flickr, they only want to see new work. Only when you post new stuff (or repost old stuff) it gets new viewers. This is because of the structure of Flickr. The structure resembles a pile of old newspapers. The old work isn't interesting for viewers because it's at the bottom of the pile.

Erik.
 
Erik van Straten said:
This is because of the structure of Flickr. The structure resembles a pile of old newspapers. The old work isn't interesting for viewers because it's at the bottom of the pile.
Click to expand...
Err...yes, if and when you only post your photos in your photostream. If, however, you would post them in albums as well, viewers can visit these, instead without having to plow down the pile. Cheers, OtL
 
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Concerning Flickr uploading: Is there a way to put the same tags (at the same time !) in a group of photos I upload, instead of having to put those tags, one by one, on each photo???
There must be a way, but I never found it...
Regards
Joao
 
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