Why 500px

It seems that px would not be a best place for sharing the photos in a long term, though I have an account there, but still no upload. Now I am considering to use flickr, or is there any reccomendation for a newbie like me to upload my photograph? It really depends on what you want to get out of it. There are many other good outlets to sell, share, gain exposure and view other photographers great work without having to deal with the kind of attitude and wanton disregard for their contributors which px seems to display.

I really appreciate your article on px. I have signed on for two reasons and am curious what your opinion is on my decision. My reason was that the portal could be a valuable backup site to my Aphotofolio site, and second it has a good category setup. I do that through Getty, and have no plans to link to sales. Should I bail?

Is there any danger having my images hosted here? It would only be a valuable backup if you can access your full resolution files, and only then if you originally shot them in jpg no RAW backup if you shoot in RAW.

If I recall they have a limit on how quickly you can upload things there, and beyond that you have to pay. There may also be space limits. If px died tomorrow would you have your photos saved somewhere else? Interresting article, thx for sharing. The problem was that this occurred regardless of what settings you had — px would sometimes indicate you photo was for sale even when it was not. Watermark all your photos would prevent this.

First of wall i want to tell Michael, you have a great portfolio! I started to be active again on px. Its kinda strange that you need to pay for plus account. Seams to me that their budget is kinda low… not earning to much from people selling the images so they need to come up with something.

Did anyone here ever sold an image there? I am still a fairly new photographer and college student and have been using zenfolio for the past year. However, I am not really happy with it. I am not interested in Squarespace either. I went and checked it out and seemed alright to me, but then I read your article. But is there any hosting website that you recommend?

My focus is portrait shots so I will have many different client galleries. At the beginning of that px post I mention Photoshelter which is where I house my Image Library the rest of my site is self hosted with Dreamhost.

Photoshelter does have a free trial though so you can test it out before you decide, which may be helpful. Great article. Great points. It seems though the article is more relevant for professional photographers who makes a living from their work and uses px for displaying their work to a larger audience. What about hobbyist photographers and budding photographers for whom making money from it is still far away.

Would you say px could still do a great job for them? Thanks Naushad! I agree some of these points are mostly relevant to those trying to make some income from their photography. I would point out that while making money can be a ways off for some people, supporting services and practices working for free for example that decrease the likelihood of making money in the future is not a beneficial tactic either.

So I guess it depends on what someone is looking for in a platform to share their photography. At the top of my post I recommended Flickr over px, and I would still do that today. Grand landscapes for example are favored over intimate ones.

I find more inspiration in variety than a relatively narrow vision, so I prefer the self directed exploration that Flickr does a better job of encouraging. Again, it does depend on what someone wants out of their photo sharing platform though.

Joined solely for the purpose of seeing good images from photographers around the world and sharing my images. Put a hyped, Technicolor sunset in and thousands respond — with extra points if the sun was shot with a mm lens and is the size of a basketball in the frame!

There are many. But there is a sameness to so much of the subject matter and look. Not sure just who is doing the recommending but, IMHO, more than half of the recommended images are simply not of adequate quality — technically or photographically — to even qualify as family snapshots! There are some truly dreadful recommended images on this site. Makes no sense at all.

Likewise, when you see similarly weak images that have thousands of likes, ya gotta question the value of a like! I joined px to share and explore. Wish there was a way to have one site for well-intentioned snap shooters and one for a more refined level of photographers. Sadly, px has become an equal-opportunity display of lower quality work occasionally interrupted by a few great, albeit similar, images. I understand the frustration if it not being a level playing field in terms of exposure.

A recent development there is that they automatically have new accounts, or accounts that have logged back in after a period away, follow a select group of favored accounts. Like my post here might suggest, I was tired of being continually disappointed with px so I stopped uploading in late And recognizing that the real motivation of any site like px is to make money, they are broadening their reach to attract more people who, good photographers or not, will pay fees to be seen and appreciated.

Understandable but obviously dumbing down the offering. Pulling my files — if they let go of them!! Now looking for another way to share. Hi Michael, would you have any recommendations for people like me who are just starting out? In cases like mine, what sites would you recommend? Thanks for your time and this excellent post! Sorry it took me so long to answer you here. While it may be a bit of overkill for someone just starting out — it also gives room to grow into.

It may look as if it is time to move from px to photshare. However I like their photo quests, some of them are good fun to participate in. The photos I have sold on px has been in connection with such contests. Getting in print is always rewarding. Perhaps they are just incentive to add to their marketplace?

Thanks for publishing your thoughts Michael. How is it better than Flickr or all the other free sites? Michael, can you recommend a free website for beginner photographers? I have many nice photos, mostly of landscapes and flowers, and I was hoping I could bring in a little cash from my hobby. Could you maybe do a post on which photography websites are best for different types of photographers? Well, not really. Free, easy, and effective are not often things that intersect.

Selling anything from any website free or not will take a lot of work. So the constraints you suggest here more or less eliminate the chances at success. Many thanks for writing such an interesting piece. Well covered, I never was payed subscriber to px — the only useful thing this photo sites can do is provide photographers with good backlinks.

As you said — to have your photos somewhere only for receiving some lame comments. I understand they are trying to stay in business, but not sure if this the most appropriate and ethic way for supporting the hole industry of photography.

When I left my office to go home to unpack my new Samsung tablet I had about followers. Not long after getting home I unpacked my tablet and checked out a few pages, one of which was my px page. I then saw that there was a px app for Android, great I thought. I downloaded and installed and viewed my page — pretty good I thought. There were some more followers than when I left the office. So, I copied all the followers and all of those that I follow to a Notepad file and then to an Excel spreadsheet.

I then compared the 2 lists and located the additional followers. I had never seen these followers before. Digging into this a little more deeply I have found that many of the people identified in my list below have loads of fake followers — these followers themselves have 0 followers. Clicking anyone these results in a page that does not exist. Scott Kelby, the highly respected photographer and author warned that this situation would happen, over a year ago. If you click it then it will typically knock a photo back about four pages in the popularity rankings, so it would appear to have a far greater weighting than a V or an F.

Unfortunately the Dislike button seems to be deployed very often by people, not because they do actually dislike a photo, but because they want to increase the chances of their own image. It is clearly being used from fake accounts in order to game the system and the loser in that regard is quality photography. As a photo garners likes and favourites its pulse increases and then as that subsides, its pulse drops too. The algorithm uses a time decay variable which happens at the same time each night.

As crappy as Flickr is, at least there is a modicum of community involvement thanks primarily to the Groups feature and their associated chat forums. There is nothing similar on px whatsoever. You want to tag your images with the most pertinent keywords, as anything unrelated or tangential will have to be deleted. Edit your list if it seems excessive. If possible, submit different crops and various orientations.

Your image could end up being a book cover, a website banner, or a product label, so give them a few options. Photos that are in-line with current trends are more likely to be searched for and purchased.

Watch your social media channels for trends, and keep an eye on what kinds of photos sell well. Staying up-to-date with trending topics and aesthetics will help you stay one step ahead. If an image would not have much commercial use, then we decline it. In order to have that commercial appeal, the photo must be visually appealing, and beyond that, it needs to have practical applications.

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