What is your favorite photo sharing platform?

This is my 20th year using SmugMug, right from their launch. Testing various options over the years, I've liked SmugMug's variety of options, ease of use, and cost best. I've never been tempted to switch. I have private galleries for different events, organizations, etc. Some password protected, and some just hidden, needing the URL to find them. The only negative is that they have made sharing (linking) specific size images more difficult these past couple of years.

In 2015 I also started using Instagram for sharing travel photos with friends and family. I quickly changed it to a more anonymous account so that, unlike my sister-in-law on Facebook, I wouldn't be advertising that my house is sitting empty for a month... Any location info from home is stripped, and travel maps start somewhere other than my actual home.

So, I voted for SmugMug, but I use both for different purposes.

Rightsaidfred said:

Dear Fujians

Many of us want to share images with other photographers, get inspiration, and receive some kind of feedback - likes, emojis, simple comments, professional comments. Or sell images.

I think everyone has just one voice, so I am interested in your favorite platform.

The following list hopefully contains most relevant platforms. It's quite a long list. Of course I don't know them all. I did some web search and used a Wikipedia list to collect the platforms.

Let me know if a platform is missing or if a service I listed should not belong to this list. And of course I am happy about an open discussion, because the "why" is of course also interesting.

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Very interesting to see that Flickr comes out on top still as most used platform for photo sharing!

Flickr is also the main platform for me, however I also share images on Facebook and Instagram, and a little bit on Twitter.

Having only a single option that you can vote on in the poll may skew the outcome and underrepresent some of the smaller platforms.

Tim van der Leeuw said:

Very interesting to see that Flickr comes out on top still as most used platform for photo sharing!

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Yep.

Tim van der Leeuw said:

Flickr is also the main platform for me, however I also share images on Facebook and Instagram, and a little bit on Twitter.

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Twitter is also a platform I forgot. Thank you.

Tim van der Leeuw said:

Having only a single option that you can vote on in the poll may skew the outcome and underrepresent some of the smaller platforms.

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I know, but there is no other option to the best of my knowledge. That's why I asked for the one favorite.

Everyone is invited to share more information like the "why" and also their 2nd and 3rd best options in the discussion.

Regards,

Martin

I'm not a prolific photographer and I like to share now and then in the forums here at DPR, usually in the "pictures for the week" threads. This was not a choice in your list.

Otherwise I am using the entire 1000 image DPR gallery because I like the fact that viewers can download exactly the same file I uploaded (I have this box checked in my profile). The other reason I use this is because it is free.

Tom Schum said:

I'm not a prolific photographer and I like to share now and then in the forums here at DPR, usually in the "pictures for the week" threads. This was not a choice in your list.

Otherwise I am using the entire 1000 image DPR gallery because I like the fact that viewers can download exactly the same file I uploaded (I have this box checked in my profile). The other reason I use this is because it is free.

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Thanks Tom. OK I see the DPReview weekly photo thread was missing. I added it. It is specific to this forum as many photo forums provide the option to share images but why not. But the DPReview gallery is on the initial poll list.

This is my current, updated list of options based upon the discussion in this thread and more own research. Probably not perfect yet. Feedback welcome.

§1. Social platforms with community functions (e.g., comments, likes)

These were my main interest in this poll. It's quite a number. Maybe not all of the listed ones really have community functions? Just reach out and I will update. Some are curated (like 100ASA), most of them are not.

1. 1x.com
2. 100ASA
3. 500px
4. Adobe Lightroom web gallery
5. Adobe Portfolio
6. Album2
7. Behance
8. Cluster
9. Dawawas
10. Dayviews
11. DeviantArt
12. Dronestagram
13. Ello
14. Exposure
15. Facebook
16. Flickr
17. fotocommunity.de
18. Fotolog
19. Fotki
20. Fotomerchant
21. glass.photo
22. ImageShack
23. imgur
24. Instagram
25. Ipernity
26. Irista
27. jAlbum
28. PhotoBlog
29. Photobucket
30. PhotoShelter
31. Pinterest
32. Pixabay
33. Pixpa
34. SecureTribe
35. Shutterfly
36. SmugMug
37. Snapfish
38. Steller Stories
39. Trover
40. Tumblr
41. Twitter
42. Unsplash
43. Youp'c
44. Zenfolio

§2. Specific to DPReview (with the option to receive likes and feedback)

1. DPReview weekly photo thread
2. DPReview gallery

§3. Image hosting services with individual sharing possibilities (lacking community functions)

1. Apple Photos
2. Google Photos

Regards,

Martin

--
https://500px.com/bachrocks
https://100asa.com/photographer/martin
https://www.instagram.com/martin.lang.photography

It's really getting to be a comprehensive list.

People will occasionally link to one of these platforms in the DPR weekly threads and I usually find them daunting if I want to pixel peep or anything other than view the tiny web images that they allow non-members to see. And, if it is possible to see full size, there is a maze of menu diving needed.

So, my experience with them has been discouraging.

Maybe a table is in order, ranking these photo sharing platforms in difficulty of use or other factors.

This could make a very good Wikipedia article.

They have this:

List of image-sharing websites - Wikipedia

I'm not putting it out here as a good example, however.

Tom Schum said:

It's really getting to be a comprehensive list.

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Thank you Tom. I was also impressed how many platforms there are available.

Tom Schum said:

People will occasionally link to one of these platforms in the DPR weekly threads and I usually find them daunting if I want to pixel peep or anything other than view the tiny web images that they allow non-members to see.

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No, not always. Often. you can see the images w/o an account. Try my links below

Tom Schum said:

And, if it is possible to see full size, there is a maze of menu diving needed.

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You are right. Unfortunately, a 100 % viewis not often possible according to my experience.

Tom Schum said:

So, my experience with them has been discouraging.

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But they're many, and they all provide different features. You probably should not condemn them all

Tom Schum said:

Maybe a table is in order, ranking these photo sharing platforms in difficulty of use or other factors.

This could make a very good Wikipedia article.

They have this:

List of image-sharing websites - Wikipedia

I'm not putting it out here as a good example, however.

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Yes I know, it was one of my sources, I mentioned Wikipedia. I am also an occasional Wikipedia author. Don't know whether I can find the time to update that list. Maybe

Martin

I just found one more:

Rightsaidfred said:

§1. Social platforms with community functions (e.g., comments, likes)

These were my main interest in this poll. It's quite a number. Maybe not all of the listed ones really have community functions? Just reach out and I will update. Some are curated (like 100ASA), most of them are not.

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......

45. Zonerama

Fuji_FTW said:

I use Exposure. It’s set up for photo essays and long form projects. And the site is gorgeous.
See mine here timothynargi.exposure.co

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Timothy - Do you know if it is possible to see EXIF data on publicly posted photos/community stories on Exposure? (I right clickeded on some photos but did not have the option)

I'm always trying to get better and am interested in exposure settings.

Thanks

JoryV said:

Fuji_FTW said:

I use Exposure. It’s set up for photo essays and long form projects. And the site is gorgeous.
See mine here timothynargi.exposure.co

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Timothy - Do you know if it is possible to see EXIF data on publicly posted photos/community stories on Exposure? (I right clickeded on some photos but did not have the option)

I'm always trying to get better and am interested in exposure settings.

Thanks

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No I don’t think there is a way yet.

I voted flickr but I just canceled my pro account. I just don’t load photos on it much anymore. I don’t post much to Instagram either. Thinking of making my own website. I have the server hardware and bandwidth to host it home. Just have to make the effort to build a Wordpress site or similar.

I think my favorite way to share is printed. Considering getting a instamax printer to easily share some with friends and family.

I use Flickr, but mostly and most happy with my blog . . .

Rightsaidfred said:

jhorse said:

I use, and have used, Smugmug for many years. Easy to use, easy to up load, easy to adjust layout and colour scheme, easy for non photographers to browse, in other words family, which is important for me, and easy to protect galleries and images and all at a reasonable cost/year.

Examples in link below.

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Thank you for sharing. Impressive photos from various genres. I see you also have a password protected folder.

Question 1: the folders on SmugMug are intended to cluster one's own photos? This is great.

This is something I do not like about 500px, you cannot sort your own ones, and you cannot have folders. The images appear just chronologically. I use the galleries but they actually it's a 'misuse' since their actual purpose is to exhibit others' photos one's own profile.

Question 2: I don't see any 'likes' on SmugMug. So, only comments but no 'likes'?

Regards,

Martin

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Hi, I am unable to answer the like question as I have never searched for nor sought them.

Regarding the folders, or galleries as Smugmug calls them, they are easy to set up and upload images from my PC to them. As I hope you can see in the link below, I have created Galleries by topic, such as travel beyond the UK, UK holidays and sports. Then one can create sub-galleries, so in Sports, I have skiing, sailing and hiking holidays by year for example. Some I have password protected simply because they include family members.

I have the basic account, which allows a limited customisation and costs about $90/£67 per annum (If paid annually rather than per month). I do not have the RAW file facility, which is an additional (small) cost/month.

Hope that helps and gives you an idea of the art of the possible.

Facebook for me.

I sell all my photos and my calendar via Facebook. I've not sold a thing via any other medium and I've really tried.

This topic has been discussed extensively in another forum at DPR, maybe the general one.

As someone said before me, "like" is an overstatement. Here's what I do:

-my website hosting: I use Adobe portfolio; super convenient as it links to my LR library.

-sharing with friends and family, and getting some feedback from my local camera club: flickr.

-instagram for the younger crowd, kids, family, beauty show . I get some limited press when a photo wins some award.

-500px: a bit more upscale, but one doesn't really get feedback. There are some good photographers that hang out there so it's fine.

I see that you use 100asa; they tried recruiting me once and the model seemed promising but I am afraid of going yet into another rabbit hole of likes. What's your impression?

When I really want feedback, I post to the (landscape) forum at fredmiranda.com. The crowd there is more serious.

Hi zurubi

zurubi said:

This topic has been discussed extensively in another forum at DPR, maybe the general one.

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Yes why not. Do you have a link to the specific discussion you're referring to?

zurubi said:

As someone said before me, "like" is an overstatement. Here's what I do:

-my website hosting: I use Adobe portfolio; super convenient as it links to my LR library.

Click to expand...

zurubi said:

-sharing with friends and family, and getting some feedback from my local camera club: flickr.

-instagram for the younger crowd, kids, family, beauty show . I get some limited press when a photo wins some award.

-500px: a bit more upscale, but one doesn't really get feedback. There are some good photographers that hang out there so it's fine.

I see that you use 100asa; they tried recruiting me once and the model seemed promising but I am afraid of going yet into another rabbit hole of likes. What's your impression?

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I have a thread on my first impression of 100ASA in the Open Talk. It's from January 2021. Now, one year later, I am happy to provide an update. Just give me a little time.

zurubi said:

When I really want feedback, I post to the (landscape) forum at fredmiranda.com. The crowd there is more serious.

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Thank you very much.

Regards,

Martin

I used to post what I consider my keepers on Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, and DPReview. I was doing this more for hedging my bets against my Apple Photos Library getting lost in iCloud somehow. But trying to sync four image libraries became an act of drudgery.

• So, having no great love for Instagram I deleted my images and killed my subscription.
• I've also pretty much given up on adding to my DPReview galleries. Just too much of a pain to use. I'll keep what's already there but I stopped trying to keep DPR synced with Flickr and Facebook.
• I try to keep my photo albums in Facebook in sync with Flickr but Facebook keeps changing the interface, making the albums harder and harder to use. Unlike Flickr, the newest photos go to the bottom of the album where nobody will ever take the time to scroll down to look at them and last year, Facebook made two changes, complicating things further, in that you have to add the images to the album, then scroll down to the bottom to add any title or technical information, plus they eliminated the drag and drop from Apple Photos; so now I have to download any images from Photos to a storage file on my Mac and then upload the images from there to my Face book Albums. Also, Facebook offers no album options beyond adding, which immediately goes to the bottom of the album, deleting an image, or copying an image to another album. My main album was getting so large and cumbersome that I split into a color album and a B&W album. To do that I had to copy the B&W images into the new B&W album, retitle the old album, and then go into the old album and delete all of the B&W images. But that color album has grown too large again, with new additions, so now I'm think of creating new smaller albums based on the cameras I used; Fuji, Leica, M43, and Nikon. I only really keep up with these Facebook albums because my family and closest friends are all on Facebook and when I add an image to an album, the all see it in my Facebook stream anyway, so I can just post photos to my homepage like I do to the groups and forget the Facebook album rat race.
• Flickr is my safety net and even though it's not a place for huge amounts of likes like the Facebook groups, it is nice when fellow photographers like one of my images to add it to their favorites. Flickr is a place to share your work with fellow photographers and not a place to please the masses like Instagram and Facebook.

I use pBase….

Thank y'all for voting! We received 130 votes which is what I call a success.

Now this is what I consider the final result of this non-representative poll. The trend has not changed during the poll. Flickr is clearly the winner, followed by Insta and SmugMug. Flickr is a subsidiary of SmugMug.

8 Participants in the poll do not share their photos with the public or with a community. Among those who share their photos (122),

• 35 %* prefer Flickr (43 votes)
• 20 % prefer Instagram (24 votes)
• 10 % prefer SmugMug (12 votes)
• 7 % host an independent own website (9 votes)
• 7 % prefer Facebook (9 votes)
• 7 % prefer 500px (8 votes)
• 2 % prefer Adobe Portfolio (2 votes) - can be linked to the Lightroom library - was not part of my list - many thanks to uniball and zurubi
• 2 % prefer the DPReview gallery (2 votes)
• 2 % prefer Zenfolio (2 votes)
• 1 % prefer 1x.com (1 vote)
• 1 % prefer Ello (1 vote) - Ello was not part of my list - many thanks to raevyn
• 1 % prefer prefer Exposure (1 vote) - Exposure was not voted but it was commented by Fuji_FTW
• 1 % prefer fotocommunity.de (1 vote)
• 1 % prefer Fotomerchant (1 vote)
• 1 % prefer glass.photo (1 vote) - glass.photo was not part of my list - many thanks to tbrasington
• 1 % prefer Google Photos (1 vote) - Google Photos was not part of my list, of course I knew about it but I thought it is not a social platform but more a personal storage space with the option to share - but why not include it. Many thanks to Raymond L
• 1 % prefer Ipernity (1 vote)
• 1 % prefer Pixpa (1 vote)
• 1 % prefer Tumblr (1 vote)
• 1 % prefer Youp'c (1 vote)

*) All percentages rounded.

I collected as many as 45 photo sharing platforms with community functions.**

1. 1x.com
2. 100ASA
3. 500px
4. Adobe Lightroom web gallery
5. Adobe Portfolio
6. Album2
7. Behance
8. Cluster
9. Dawawas
10. Dayviews
11. DeviantArt
12. Dronestagram
13. Ello
14. Exposure
15. Facebook
16. Flickr
17. fotocommunity.de
18. Fotolog
19. Fotki
20. Fotomerchant
21. glass.photo
22. ImageShack
23. imgur
24. Instagram
25. Ipernity
26. Irista
27. jAlbum
28. PhotoBlog
29. Photobucket
30. PhotoShelter
31. Pinterest
32. Pixabay
33. Pixpa
34. SecureTribe
35. Shutterfly
36. SmugMug
37. Snapfish
38. Steller Stories
39. Trover
40. Tumblr
41. Twitter
42. Unsplash
43. Youp'c
44. Zenfolio
45. Zonerama

**) Disclaimer: I did not check every item for community functions. And of course I still may have missed platforms.

Next to these sharing platforms, there are image hosting services without community functions like Google or Apple photos and specific forums such as the DPReview weekly photo thread or the DPReview gallery.

Other options are to sharing prints (McWoodley) and, of course, operating an own blog.

Regards,

Martin

Rightsaidfred said:

zurubi said:

I see that you use 100asa; they tried recruiting me once and the model seemed promising but I am afraid of going yet into another rabbit hole of likes. What's your impression?

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I have a thread on my first impression of 100ASA in the Open Talk. It's from January 2021. Now, one year later, I am happy to provide an update. Just give me a little time.

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So zurubi, you asked me for my opinion on 100ASA.

I will keep it short, please read my first impression (link see above). 100ASA is a curated platform. It is a young enterprise. I contacted them multiple times, and they are responsive. From time to time they come up with new gallery types and new options on their platform, so I confirm they are agile. They have developed an app for cell phones in the meantime.

The best way to see what photos they aim for is to check the Elite gallery. The photos in the Elite gallery are hand-picked by their team. On the opposite, the Opening gallery is what the 'community' there does rather not prefer.

Checking the Elite gallery, IMO, they have a clear preference for extremely edited photos, what is often called 'fine art'. Or so-called 'creative edits' which are 'photoshopped' artificial photos. They also seem to have a preference for staircases or parts of buildings.

It is simply not my cup of tea.

After more than one year, I still do not really connect with 100ASA. Btw, I have not the faintest idea how 100ASA want to compete with Instagram through community-based content curation. In my opinion, the spectrum of photographic art the 100ASA management resp. community prefer is pretty shallow.

My home base is still 500px. I have identified very interesting photographers and all the time discover more and more interesting people to follow. I have learned to permit 'photographical diversity' when viewing photos, very different styles, just as an inspiration. Sometimes I deliberately scan the new uploads to allow even more diversity and not to stew in my own juice. Sure there are a lot of below average photos on 500px, and certainly there is also the typical social media phenomenon (i.e., the number of likes or followers does not correlate well with quality or uniqueness), but there are also really really good ones! 500px has a way greater amount of photos per time unit as compared to 100ASA. Currently I see no reason to change my platform. I am pretty happy.

Regards,

Martin

--
https://500px.com/bachrocks
https://100asa.com/photographer/martin
https://www.instagram.com/martin.lang.photography