More thoughts on photo sharing
In my last post I tried to express my disillusionment with sharing photos online in the Enslopocene (the period in history where soulless tech bros have taught their fancy autocomplete to create slop).
The trouble is, that sounded quite defeatist and I don’t think we humans should take this lying down. We need to keep creating, even if the tech bros continue to churn out worthless slop based on what they have stolen from us. But how?
Flickr
I need to talk about Flickr for a minute. Flickr was one of the original photo sharing websites back in the mid-2000s and it was great. The trouble is, it changed owners a few too many times and now it stumbles on as a relic from that era.
Click on the wrong link and you’ll be transported back to Flickr from a period some decades ago. There’s a surface-level sheen over the front half of the website now, but the old stuff is still there. It’s a bit like Windows 11. Click on the wrong part in Settings and you’ll be transported back to Vista-era Control Panel.
I owe Flickr and its users a great deal for encouraging me to get out there and take photos back then. Had it not been around I’d probably be into something else now, but a lot of the community that had existed back then have either moved on...or have sadly passed away.
Unfortunately, Instagram came along and made a niche for itself, before it was promptly bought by Facebook and turned into a narcissist factory full of people who have...how do I put this politely...have succumbed to extreme peer-pressure and unrealistic body standards. Oh, and bots...so many bots.
Gradually, the reach photographers once had on the platform has been sidelined in favour of brainrot and ads. This would be the prime opportunity for Flickr to modernise and try to win the photographers back. Instead it has just become annoying...and expensive if you want some of the annoyance to go away.
Glass
This week I have been trying an app and website called Glass. It is a members only community for sharing your photos, commenting and showing appreciation of the work of other humans.
It is currently $40 a year, so roughly $3.33 a month and provides a more modern, clean and enjoyable experience than Flickr can muster, offers no video or short-form content and no ads.
Spending time on there, looking at other people’s work and uploading some of my greatest hits has almost given a fresh lease on the photographer buried inside me.
You can follow people whose work you like, which creates a chronological timeline (remember those?); view photos by camera or lens, or by tag. There are dozens of pre-set tags to categorise your uploads, helping other people find just what they are looking for.
Interestingly, there’s no stats like there are on Flickr, making it less of a popularity contest and more of a community, which seems to be what they have set out to do.
They have an about page which warms the heart somewhat.
From videos to podcasts, blogs to social posts, authenticity and humanity became completely commodified. With photography, the shift felt seismic. Photos became content, sharing became performance, and community lurched from meaningful connection to thin transactions.
They have perfectly summed up what I and no doubt many others are feeling with the way the internet has been going lately. It’s great to see these guys also have a presence on Mastodon.
I’m going to stick with Glass for a while, see how it feels and how it develops. So far, so very good but if you would like to see it for yourself they offer a 7-day free trial. You’ll find me here if you do.
Now that fire season appears to be over for another year, it feels like the right time to take the camera for a walk.
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