The site I like best for posting photographs is Flickr. It is also a great way to extend your audience beyond
yourself and help in your self evaluation of your
photographs. To use Flickr's many features you post photographs and
after doing so you must login to see all of the features.
Under the word "Your Photostream" you will see the word "Photostream".
To the right of this you will see a series of linked words. Click on "Recent Activity".
You should see a list of thumbnails of your photographs.
Click on the thumbnail and the screen will change to the full view of that photograph.
Below
your photograph you will see "Comments and faves". Most people who like
your photograph will make it a favorite rather than comment on it.
Occasionally they will do both.
When someone chooses your
photograph as a favorite, you will see a star followed by their name and
the words " added this photo to his/her/their favorites". If you hope
to have this person continue to follow your photography, you should
click on this link, which takes you to all of their their favorites and
make one of their photographs one of your favorites.
Scroll to the top and under their username click on "Photostream to see their photographs.
Click
on any of their thumbnails and when the full photograph appears you
will see a button at the top left with a star followed by the word
"Favorite". Once you click on it, it goes into your favorites photograph
collection as well as automatically sends that person a message that
you have made this a favorite. You also may want to consider making them
a contact.
Monitoring views is a good way to determine the
visual impact of a photograph. The numbers can be played so comparative
numbers are the best indication of visual impact. A photograph that gets
10 views probably does not have the visual impact of one that gets 50
It
is not likely that very many people will see posted photographs on
Flickr without interacting with other people. This can be done in two
ways. The first is to go to
http://www.flickr.com/exploreOver
8 million photographs a day are uploaded to Flickr. From these they use
a secret algorithm to choose 500 images a day for the Explore section
of the site. I have been lucky enough to be chosen eight times for this
honor.
The objective is to get "views", which is a good way to
get started on getting an audience response to photographs beyond a
small circle of family and friends.
The second way to boost your views is to put your individual
photographs in as many groups as possible. Searches for any group can be
made by going to Communities > Search Groups and entering a search
for a favorite subject. Join lots of groups and lots of photographs to
them.
Using contacts favorites is another way to find your own favorites and new contacts.
The
"popular" index is a useful way to measure the visual impact of a
photograph, although probably less accurate than monitoring comparative
view numbers.
I have used Flickr for my own photography since 2006.
