Photo Sharing Sites

In the nineties, photos were typically scanned into jpeg images and hosted on hand-built web sites one by one. Image quality was normally poor and grainy even though the size of files was typically larger than today. Because most web user's were still using dial up modems to access the internet, not many had the patience to download jpeg files from the web, so images were also typically small in the 300~400 pixel range. The few digital cameras that were in existence normally took very poor quality shots that were not suitable for viewing on fine resolution monitors.

In the early 2000's, photography image hosting and photo sharing sites exploded across the web. Here I will examine a few of them that I have joined personally. Of course we still recomend you join our photo gallery, however we won't just stick our heads in the sand and pretend we're the only one on the planet.

Flickr

This service was started in early 2004 by a couple from Vancouver, Canada. Previously they had been engaged in an online gaming web site. Sold to Yahoo! in 2005 for $30 million USD. The web site offers lots of social interaction, although due to its enormous size, it may be a little intimidating at first. One of the best features is probably to join some groups to discover people in your area or with similar interests in photography. The larger groups can fill up quickly with photos and postings will quickly be moved farther down the list. Fotozon Flickr Site

Photo Bucket

This web site boasts the most pictures hosted mostly due to their affiliation with MySpace. This is a basic photo hosting service and you won't find a lot of social interaction, commentors or other fancy features like the other web sites. Because Photo Bucket is primarily for hosting images to be posted on blogs or myspace, there's not really any nice public albums to display and they also show a lot of advertising on their site. Foto Bucket Site

Trek Earth

While their web site is a little hard to navigate (logging in takes you back to the home page) Trek Earth is kind of a cool site to view photos from lots of different places around the world. They also have a "workshop" feature which allows re-posting the photo after some edits for color, brightness, cropping and other effects. A point system also shows you how long a member has joined for, and how popular they are. Foto Trek

Travel Photographers

Travel Photographer's is a small web site, but well run by the editors. Images posted on the site normally receive a few comments, and they are always very constructive. I'd recommend this to any serious photographers that want to put their work out there in a professional style forum to be critqued. They do charge an annual membership fee of $39, but it probably is well worth the minimal cost. Travel Fotos

Woophy

This is a nice little service that categorizes photos by location from all around the world. Using their simple world map in green color, you can quickly zoom to a country or specific area and see the most recent or all pictures from the area. It is well used in the Netherlands and other parts of Europe. In fact, it seems like several users are standing by because I invariably receive a comment within a few minutes of posting a new photo. Although the city names are out of date for Taiwan, they are constantly working to improve the site. Also, there is no way to link to an "album" because the entire site is accomplished in flash. Recent Woophy Foto

Other Sites

Without setting up your own web site, here are a few other sites out there that I have not tried personally, but are gaining popularity and have some different features.

Picasa (Google) - Google is a relative late comer to the photo hosting busines, however they have thrown their massive weight behind an integrated desktop photo organize and online albums. There are no advertisements, as they primarily make their profit from referral fees to printing shops across the USA. This is more of a personal album. As of this writing, there are not really many groups or social networks in Picasa.

photo.net - Since 1993. Great Artistic photos and ranking system.

PBASE - $23 to $60 per year.

Foto Thing - Good Pics, the founder has recently sold the web site and started a new one.

Other Services

iLife (Apple) - Apple's system is not free, and you must own a mac to use it, however the custom results are impressive for beginners. Web sites produced with their system are not search engine friendly however.

More

Know a good photo site out there not on this list? let me know