Why we should pay for Flickr.

For the Cameraderie subscribers, if you need a quick place for a few pics you can always create a personal album in the "Media Gallery" here. Hotlinking is disabled and it's not as robust as Flickr & others but might still be useful for some. :)



(Note: The "Media" section isn't used as much as the forums here so I may have to tweak settings and/or permissions if subscribers start using it to create albums & other stuff.)
 
(e.g any photoservice that displays the thumbnails in your photostream only as a square crop is a complete non-starter for me personally)
Before anybody says it :D...... yes, the "media" gallery here does a 'centered-&-cropped' thumbnail, something that the makers of XenForo have decided on much to the chagrin of some of their customers. There doesn't seem to be enough mass momentum among their customer base to persuade them into offering alternatives. :(
 
Haha, I didn't even think of our galleries here when I wrote this. More along the lines of 500px, etc. :)

Before anybody says it :D...... yes, the "media" gallery here does a 'centered-&-cropped' thumbnail, something that the makers of XenForo have decided on much to the chagrin of some of their customers. There doesn't seem to be enough mass momentum among their customer base to persuade them into offering alternatives. :(
 
I also received the email today. I'm canceling after this year, but I'll probably invest in a SmugMug account. I need to prioritize services and Flickr just won't make the cut. Despite being a great photography platform it's neither "pro" enough for professionals, nor compelling enough for amateurs and social media enthusiasts.
 
I got the email today too. While I appreciate the ability to research lenses based on the groups there is so much missing from what Flickr once was. I think that I'll look elsewhere for the online component of sharing.

I have my favorite forums and now I'll look for a place to replace Flickr. Right now the top 2 places are SmugMug and 500px.
Research is ongoing...
 
Ipernity.

Resistance is futile ;)
You know, I'll actually look into that ... I'm still trying to get an angle on Flickr's/Smugmug's strategy, but I can't bring myself to like it. Yes, I could extend my subscription for a little less money for one year, but what's going to happen after that? Ipernity provides another tier between the free and the $50 version; why don't they offer something similar? I don't need unlimited storage and traffic - just a nice place to store the images I care to show online.

M.
 
Unsure what I’m going to do either. I’ve been a Pro member for many years and like the format (layout, groups, etc), the ability to store high res files, and the quality of the content/images from the user base.

I’m a bit concerned about the long term sustainability and the risk of “investing” further into what may die off.

Ted Forbes has some interesting thoughts / comments on the topic:

 
Okay, after further looking into this, I'm pretty much set on cancelling my Pro membership. I feel Ipernity's business model is much more appealing (a community that finances its own services - what's not to like?). I'm fully aware of the fact that there's no telling how Ipernity would scale, but they have very sound expertise behind the platform as well as an active core team, so I don't see why it shouldn't work out in the long run (except of course for financial reasons).

A key aspect in all this is that I really don't need most of Flickr's Pro "benefits" - ad-free content presentation and unlimited space/traffic are nice, but other aspects (community interaction being one major thing) really aren't up to today's standard or not useful to me, and all the merchandising stuff is more of a nuisance than an asset in my eyes. Ipernity is much more tightly nit as a community, and the feature set appeals a lot more to me than Flickr's. Crucially, except for "unlimited" storage (100GB are more than enough for me), you actually get more for your money when using Ipernity's Standard plan - including a personalised page layout that may even enable me to replace/drop my by now totally defunct personal website ... All in all, I think it's well worth the risk going for the test Club membership (one year at a hugely reduced rate with full benefits of the Standard plan) for me.

And there's another thing: I usually only present my images on Cameraderie and maybe mu-43.com - I don't need or want a bigger audience that's just after the trendy stuff I'm not interested in shooting.

I know that in the mid-term, this switch will most probably mean leaving Flickr altogether (I don't have the time and stamina to maintain more than one collections - not that I have done a good job at maintaining Flickr, to be honest). We'll see how it goes and how well I can live with all the restrictions and downsides of a free account. But the moment it gets bad, I'll pull everything off Flickr and be gone.

One week left to ponder ...

M.
 
including a personalised page layout that may even enable me to replace/drop my by now totally defunct personal website
are there any examples of these page layouts?
(All I can see when I go there is the photo-pages with square-cropped thumbnails - that's why I always lost interest pretty quick...)
 
are there any examples of these page layouts?
(All I can see when I go there is the photo-pages with square-cropped thumbnails - that's why I always lost interest pretty quick...)
I don't know yet how flexible they are - but I'll look into it. What I've seen so far isn't that encouraging as far as the layout is concerned, to be honest - there seems to be a default that, yes, contains the square thumbnails (it dominates the mobile layout, too). I've found quite a few profile pages that look basically identical ... and not very pleasing. We'll see what's possible.

Something that I find iteresting: Ipernity also allows you to publish articles and what they call "docs" (don't know what that is, yet).

M.
 
Ipernity seems kind of fun. Like Flickr but with a friendly community feel to it.

But it seems like it's way too social for me. Secondly the groups are cumbersome and all that.

Most of all, I'd like to receive critique for everything I post, Ipernity (and this place) is too nice for that. But different use cases, I know.

Wonder if these usecases I made up reflect the truth? :)

  • Just want to dump your (unorganized) vacation photos to a site and not give a f**k about what others are going to say: Flickr, Ipernity.
  • Trying hard to launch a career: Instagram, maybe Flickr although probably by now its relevancy has gone.
  • Trying to get better via c&c: ARS, RFF, DPReview forums (these people share a lot of (un)wanted criticism and I've learned a bunch from that critique!)
I think I'll try that Eric Kim's idea, ARSbeta next.
 
Thanks to @melanieylang, I just stumbled upon Pixieset; even their most expensive "all inclusive" plan (including website tools) is less costly than either Flickr or Ipernity (though to be fair, Ipernity's entry offer is hard to beat). The galleries I've seen so far are a lot more visually appealing than Ipernity ... A bit monotonous (or even monotone), though. Anyhow, I'll check out their free offers as well to see what's what.

This may or may not keep me from signing up with Ipernity in the first place.

M.
 
Thanks to @melanieylang, I just stumbled upon Pixieset; even their most expensive "all inclusive" plan (including website tools) is less costly than either Flickr or Ipernity (though to be fair, Ipernity's entry offer is hard to beat). The galleries I've seen so far are a lot more visually appealing than Ipernity ... A bit monotonous (or even monotone), though. Anyhow, I'll check out their free offers as well to see what's what.

This may or may not keep me from signing up with Ipernity in the first place.

M.
As a new Pixieset user of a free account, I'm not sure about sharing EXIF data or adding text, so it may be only partially-useful.
 
I just revisited Ipernity and it seems that the provision of BBCode (was there back in 2013) is no longer an option. Has anyone found that feature by any chance? I also used to use a Publish Service in LIghtroom. I haven't had a chance to look for that but hope that has not gone as well.
 
Back
Top