Just so you know: it qualifies as geeky to get a VPS to host your own feed reader. That’s not something you should expect the average photographer to do. 
I had lots of problems with TT-RSS BTW. After updates it sometimes killed the whole installation. I’m a SQLite fanboy (taking care of full blown DBs is for admins), so now I’m on FreshRSS since a couple of years. THAT has been 100% carefree. 
Regards,
Fellow geek and photographer
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What I’d like to see: self hostable alternative built on PHP + SQLite (runs on any shared hosting and simple to maintain) and WebMentions for interaction. Preferably not a carbon copy of Instagram featuring with many of its drawbacks and limitations. It should be a stream rather than a garden. I.e. not a place to dump and backup your 8TB photo collection, but a feed centric experience that is focused on posting the best. Flickr could never quite figure out what it was. Or rather, it tried to be both.
Could possibly be financed by offering a hosted version (like wordpress.com).
I don’t know if pixelfed will run with sqlite, but it checks all your other boxes.
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I have been playing around with https://lbry.com/
It is a blockchain tech, so, be careful of possible con jobs (I am hopeful but weary of new tech, as anyone who lived through the internet of the last 20 years should be 
).
However, all of the websites I have seen so far in this thread, save perhaps a personal website (and, depending on how you view centralized services, it also could be lumped in with the rest) are based on a centralized server philosophy.
All of the popular services seemed like they had some advantage for the creative artist at some point in time, even if it was just a large audience… but then, something changes… always. Just look at our “friends” at youtube
Libry is an type of “double blockchain”–> one gives ownership, and one provices a means of compensation. Think of bitcoin and bittorrent having a partnership.
Some are seeing it as a alternative to youtube, but you can also use the protocol for still photos, giving us an interesting model for compensating creative individuals without a central power enforcing the rules. Heck, half the mess we are in (as well as the birth of open source software) was caused by government rules (the copyright laws of the mid 1970’s) that treats software like they were books or magazines, not like engines or screwdrivers, much to the profit of companies like Microsoft, I might add…
I thought the internet in the 1990’s was going to the the key that liberated us from corporate and governmental bondage. Unfortunately, the whole thing can be now viewed as a con to control what we say and what we think.
Technologies like these are not “popular”, yet, but, if people like those on this forum (tech minded, like alternative software for various reasons, and aren’t as swayed by what marketing departments tell us is good) don’t at least see if it is a fit for them, how will any acceptable replacement be found to instagram, who, IMHO, engages in theft, like the pickpocket who gives you a fake flower… was your identity really worth that pretty plastic trinket?
I never used instagram/facebook for making money in photography, but I did try it in my main business, and man, what a waste of time with little to no payoff. The whole thing is a con job. We, as humans, are better than that.
(sorry if this post seems like a rant, but the events of the last years have made me realize some of the poeple who were screaming in the late 1990’s about the state of the internet were… correct).
To change things 90 degrees, and linking to Aurelienpierre, it all depends on your goals:–> why do you want to post things online? Many people don’t answer that question fully, so they don’t look for the right tool for the job.
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I’m on lbry for about a year, posting my videos (along with youtube). It’s a nice concept and alternative, and decentralised (unlike their Odysee counterpart). It still need traction though.
Cool. Glad it isn’t new to everyone.
My understanding is that the Odysee thing is a stopgap to offer a service that works while more people adopt the platform, otherwise, everything would just buffer or break until enough people are on the “network”.
With the crawler, they do make it easy to replicate your youtube channel on their service.
It will be interesting to see if people use it for showing (and perhaps selling) still photography/3d artwork. If nothing else, it seems to be another place people might see who you are… and a repository for your work that is traceable for authorship, as can’t be censored at any time by some governmental or corporate body.
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I can see some photographer account, but still far from what you could find on Flickr for example. However Lbry interface is not build for photo gallery, is it ?
No, not on purpose at the moment.
It could be, however, as the underlying technology is open source and could be repurposed by a group of photographers… or a single photographer. The different here is that no body is capable of owning your work here, unlike all of the other suggestions made.
Again, it goes back to your goals. What are you trying to accomplish by putting photos up online?
– networking? I think the idea of using instagram for “networking” in getting clients or booking models is a bit of a pyramid scheme (a con), regardless of what the youtube personalities say. Whole thing seems like a bit of an echo chamber.
– a portfolio? Personally, your own website is the way to do this. Looks “professional” to clients, and there are many open source ways to do this for close to free. I think getting clients is an active process. You contact people who might want your services, then you prove to them that you are person who fits their criteria.
– Selling prints? People don’t just buy a print randomly. There must be an emotional connection to the print to want to own it (or a business reason, but that is the different topic of marketing photography). Building a “name” is supposed to work, but how many “well known” well, well known amongst photography people, have such small reach on social media.
It is almost like the only ones who win at social media are the social media companies themselves
– feeling good about oneself? Well… you can just post them here, and you will feel good as you learn tools to express your vision even better.
I think the whole “influencer” craze has done the opposite of what they claim for photographers.
Oh… and don’t get me started with how adobe and the like got the greater photography community to commit financial suicide regarding stock photography.
I think the idea that you are just put your work out there and people will “discover” you… isn’t how it works. All of these platforms should be tools you use to increase the market’s awareness, not some magic lantern for success.
Don’t worry, musicians have it just as bad, and there is more naivete over on that island.
As long as we are doing this for our own enjoyment, many things work. But, as soon as money is exchanged for your creative efforts, the options change.
Again, just depends on your goals.
Ok… now I’m ranting (sorry).
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The “carbon copy of Instagram” link in my post goes to Pixelfed. 
While I think it’s an amazing display of fediverse tech, I hate Instagram to much to like it. The square cropping of images on the profile pages frustrates me beyond belief. If a photographer does not shoot 1x1 (or crop to 1x1) all I’m looking at is strange automated crops of their images. So, I have to click each picture in their stream to see it as it should be seen. A masonry style layout (like Flickr uses) would be the good move here.
Maximum resolution for portrait oriented images is 1350 pixels high (same as Instagram), which is quite limited. Mastodon could be an alternative, but it took the worst cropping practice from Twitter and it even crops portrait oriented images to landscape in the feed, a practice that even Twitter gave up after years of complaining from users.
Pixelfed does not seem to work without a full fledged db. The stack is not trivial.
I know it’s an old thread this one, but I have recently read this article on Vero, with a straight comparison to instagram, saying how instagram is no longer a true place to be for photographers etc while Vero is (obviously). I found it mildly interesting and after a quick search here I realized that Vero was actually mentioned here a long time ago!
I wonder if any of you has used Vero and found it interesting/useful etc
Addendum: I think most of you will know it but “vero” in italian means “true”. Oh right I get it! In fact the tagline is “the true social”. And then: “Ad-free, Algorithm-free Social”… these things sound nice.
[after five minutes]
Hang on: I have looked a bit on the website and well maybe it’s open to all etc etc but if you’re over 40 and you’re not a “creator” or an “artist” (or a crazy dude that shoots from the top of skyscrapers) then this is all verboten for you. I already know what they’re saying from over there: yo old man, go back to your Ansel Adams books!!! (I prefer Harry Gruyaert but that’s what they’re saying).
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I’ve never been much into social media - I have a Flickr account but that’s it - but have wondered about Vero. Looks quite good, although there seems to be a few question marks over the ‘long term’ strategies that they might or might not use for funding etc. I can’t stand Instagram or fb so not sure.
Interested to hear what other people think.
What about 500px?
I also wanted to test vero but then read about the CEO and didn’t want to support this guy.
For the Moment Mastodon and a Website will be fine for me. Mastodon is intervened with pixelfed so it doesn’z really matter where you go. Depends only which look and tools you prefer and which onstance.
LG wapitifass
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I’d also recommend taking a look at pixelfed and mastodon to share images.
Do you think Instagram is crashing?
Sure does seem like they’ve chased tiktok to the point of the app not being recgnizable to what it was before.
I wasn’t aware of photog.social, it looks good! But, what makes it better than pixelfed?