Whether you’re a pro photographer or an aspiring amateur, you cannot ignore the fact that one of the most popular places to share photos, talk about photography and learn the art is the internet. And if you’re on the internet, you’re probably going to get a lot of the best photography interaction on social media sites. Here are our list of social media applications that make life so much more pleasant for we photographers – pro and amateur alike.
Flickr – No other site has yet come close to it in terms of popularity. This is about the easiest way to share your photos online, not to mention comment (or get comments) on them as well as chat and connect with other photographers. The privacy settings also mean you can keep everything away from public eyes and just use it as a place to store your images. And we even have a LightStalking Flickr group which is awesome!
Picasa – Probably the only real challenger to Flickr at the moment is Google’s Picasa. While the site itself is great, it’s the free downloadable software that really makes this setup attractive. It is probably the best free software available for sorting your images and creating a workflow. Of course it encourages you to upload your image to the Picasa website (which is getting pretty popular), but that is not mandatory. We use the software without being on the site, but we might soon be persuaded to make the leap onto this great site too.
Twitter – While it’s only really a medium for chatting, the new information that is shared on this site regarding teh world of photography is amazing. If you’re following a good selection of photographers and check in regularly you will find some incredible links to tutorials shared here as well as a few links to great photos. (Don’t forget to follow us @LightStalking)
Twitpic – A great site that makes it easy to share images with your friends on Twitter. You don’t even need to sign up for an account as you can sign in using your Twitter account. Very handy.
Photofizz – If you’re looking to kill an hour or ten, then this new site is a great addition to your bookmarks. It is basically an aggregation site that lets users submit the best photography links from around the internet. It is always up to date and you will almost certainly discover a lot of new great sites.
WordPress – This is a blogging platform that lets anyone have a website to share their thoughts with the world. It is also especially great for photographers and some of the best photography sites on the internet are built on this platform. Light Stalking for example! There are also a heap of great plugins and photography themes that photographers can use to customise their own site and share their photography as well as get comments from others.
Facebook – Love it or hate it, it’s a great place to make contact with other photographers and see their work. There are thousands of photographers using Facebook (including Light Stalking) and thousands of groups and pages all about photography. The Light Stalking Facebook group shows how popular it is to share photos with friends here too.
Picnik – This isn’t so much a social media application itself, but it allows you to interact with the photos on all of your other social media accounts like Flickr and Facebook. The tool itself which allows a slew of post production options for your images is jaw-droppingly awesome, and the social media stuff is just an added bonus. You MUST check out Picnik if you haven’t already.
LinkedIn – This one is perhaps a lot more useful for professional photographers or those hoping to become professional, but it is a great way to make contact with both other photographers and those looking to hire them. It allows you to showcase some of your work through a company page and gives you a lot of exposure for free. Definitely one worth checking out if you’re looking to take your photography into the realm of paid work.
EPhotoZine – This is a social network for photographers that has almost every bell and whistle you could want. Upload photos, share photos, comment, get help, enter competitions, contact other photographers – it’s difficult to name what could actually be added to this website that isn’t already there. Perhaps our only gripe with it is some of the information could be improved a little, but this is a small gripe. In all, ePhotoZine is well worth checking out.
9 Comments
You might want to check out RedBubble – good thing about this community is the chance to sell your Photographic work to a world wide audience. Quality of the products is excellent.
You know, after I wrote this post, I happened to be looking around on your site and saw the banner to redbubble and thought it would have been a great inclusion for the post! lol
i'm in full agreement about flickr being top of this list. i'd also put wordpress as second due to the sheer numbers of photographers using it.
Deviant Art also has some great photography, and you can search for groups of photography users:
https://browse.deviantart.com/photography/
Great applications that all make real world sense for photographers! Thanks for the article!
Useful list. Redbubble should be definitely included here as it seems to be growing in popularity – but I think someone else has mentioned this. Flickr seems to be good in terms of SERPs because of its tie in with Yahoo.
Flickr has not evolved over the years.
Has no one heard of 500px yet?
Great to know about social media available for photographers..will make proper use of it..