500px 'gaming': Is it really a problem?

Where to share

As part of my drive this year to up exposure of my photos, I looked into the different sharing options for photos. There are now a huge variety of sites that let you share photos, with a lot of it coming down to the sort of sharing you want to do. From what I found, I'd roughly categorise the three main types as follows:

• 'Share everything' - These are your standard social network routes. Whilst Flickr was the undisputed king for years, the likes of Facebook and Google+ have chipped away at that. From a photographers perspective, Flick would still be king because of the ability to submit to groups, join communities and even submit photos to Getty for stock image selling. However, the sheer volume uploaded to it often means good photos are buried under lots of average ones
• 'Selective sharing' - These encourage more selective posting of photos, the aim being you build up a small but high quality portfolio. The main one at present is 500px, but Redbubble also offers a similar service. The benefit of these sites is the smaller amount of photos usually means a higher overall quality.
• 'Curated' - This is the extreme, elite step, whereby images are curated before uploading. 1x.com is a great example of this; 1 in 20 photos gets through the vetting process, which results in an extremely high standard of photos. 1x.com also offers a critique service, where people can upload images to get advice and constructive feedback.

Whilst there are cost considerations for all the options, the main reason for my my choice was the level of feedback and visibility I was looking for. For me, Flickr is too saturated and too nice, whereas 1x.com is too extreme (I like my photos, but I don't think I'm thick skinned enough just yet to have someone tear them apart!). That leaves me with 500px, a site I've used for a couple years now and not had any regrets!

500px in a nutshell

500px logo

500px is intended to be a bit more selective than Flickr. It gives people the chance to share their best photos and create an online portfolio. This reduction in uploads helps the good photos stand out; there's certainly some amazing photos on Flickr, but they can get lost in the swarm of other photos.

When a photo gets uploaded, people can view them, and if they like them they can:

• Vote to indicate they like it
• Favourite to indicate they love it
• Add comments about it (originally supposed to allow constructive criticism, but is more of a love fest these days)
• Share on other social media

Getting noticed through friendliness

So, having signed up, I started uploading photos. I carefully selected my choices, I tagged them accordingly, uploaded them and waited for the views to roll in. 

Cyclist by MJM Images
And... not a lot happened. I got a couple of likes, a few people started following me, but nothing major. This pattern continued for the past year or so; I'd upload a photo, I'd get a handful of views and that was it.

At the tail end of last year, I decided to try and get more active on 500px, and started making an effort to comment on other photos. All of a sudden, I noticed my likes shooting up.


Ingham Church by MJM Images
The above photo was the first where I started getting involved in the 500px community. It's certainly better than my earlier efforts, but I wouldn't say it was hugely so. However, it became clear that the more I put in to the community, the more I got out. Soon, I had my first 'upcoming' photos and then my first 'popular' one (upcoming and popular are categories within 500px as a way of showcasing photos).

So, as part of my daily efforts to spread my photos, I visit 500px, find photos I like and let the person know (as well as sharing at least one a day on twitter and pinterest).

Friendliness = Gaming, apparently

Turns out, however, that some quarters of the internet view this approach of being nice to each other as a problem. See, when 500px first started, it was much more about constructive feedback and the best of the best photos only. However, 1.5 million users later, it's a little harder to get noticed. The best way to manage that is by getting a photo listed as popular, and the best way to do that is to get as many votes as possible. It's this vote hunting which has irked a lot of people, whereby people go liking everything they see in the hope that people will subsequently return the favour.

But is it really such a problem?

In the purist minds, yes. Photos should stand up to scrutiny, and the best photos shouldn't need the photographer blindly promoting to the point of spam. However, when you have over a million people potentially uploading at any time, getting noticed amongst all that becomes tricky or even impossible. Good photos that were uploaded at just the wrong time to get noticed suddenly find themselves further down the pecking order, compared to somebody who managed to get followers behind them.

The fact is, you need a base of followers to begin with before your work truly takes off, and part of the way to get that is through participating in photo voting. Yes, the top photographers don't do this, the same way top celebrities don't need to visit everybody else's page and convince them to visit theirs. The top photographers already have that level of exposure and following, the other 99% aren't that fortunate.

A happy medium

For me, I'm happy to participate within reason. I regularly go online and look through the photos, to find ones I like. I could probably leave more constructive feedback, but I don't feel that I'm experienced enough to do so. Plus, part of the enjoyment for me is when people do appreciate my photos. My livelihood isn't based on this so I don't need them to be supreme, but like anybody I do enjoy people telling me they liked what I've taken! Besides, it's lead me to some excellent people to follow (both on 500px and twitter), making it a pleasant experience when I visit the site.

I think it's just a case of finding a compromise between liking photos just to get popularity, and liking photos because you, well, like the photos. Do I sometimes go overboard in the hope it will draw people to my site? A little, but if it ever got to the point that it was a chore to do so I'd just stop. 

In the meantime, feel free to visit my 500px page and like my photos ;-)

My 500px site

I'm also on twitter