Up until today I've uploaded almost daily to 500px. It was a photo sharing site that invited us to "upload your best photos" This I did, I also enjoyed being able to view some of the fantastic photos on there, comment on them and build a network of fellow photographers.
The only downside of 500px was it's quirky scoring system and it's dislike button. Everything you did on 500px was public except for the dis-liker's, who were allowed to remain anonymous. Dislike wasn't about constructive criticism, it was mainly used to knock photos off the 500px popular pages.
Today 500px disappeared for a few hours and reappeared with a new site. Meanwhile I had an email:
Introducing Market
We are about to launch Market: the best place to sell your prints and digital downloads.
With the 500px Market, anyone can buy prints or digital downloads of your photos. Get your photos in front of millions of people, and start earning more.
They tweeted that there would be a couple of other changes too and that we would like them - we don't!
Eventually the site returned. To my horror the first page I landed on was my "flow" page. This showed all the photos I had liked, favourited and uploaded - all in a terrible visual jumble.
Just look at
500px support pages to see just how many people don't like this mess that's called a flow. (Though I notice earlier negative feedback questions have quickly disappeared)
On further exploring I see that finding my contacts pages is all but impossible! The wall where we could interact has gone, instead we are told to interact on photos. It seems that the social aspect of sharing photos has been done away with and it's now just about making money.
But... there's no info on what the photographer's margin is on sold photos. So it's all about money in their pockets
And to top it all that damn dislike button is still there - and still anonymous!
Does anyone have any suggestions for good photo sharing sites apart from Flickr, G+ and 500px?
23/02/12 addendum 1: there is now a pdf document on 500px that outlines photographers fees
23/02/12 addendum 2: Flow has been altered to now show my uploads, so at least the criticisms there were responded to. But it's still difficult to find my friend's portfolios and to know when they have uploaded
24/02/12 addendum3: Flow has returned to the mess it initially was
