Generally speaking I think it’s a good idea to be selective in who you receive feedback from. Make sure you trust the forum and the people in it. There’s a huge risk of being given poor advice. Ideally you need to know the people, their background and the work they produce (photography or otherwise). The risk of some rando on the internet fixating on their hobby horse or regurgitating ill understood “rules” is immense.
Filtering the unhelpful out is difficult because critique isn’t that useful if you can shrug it off as being unqualified. So by ensuring you can trust the people you are forced to take their comments seriously, even when it hurts. I say this as someone who has taught design related subjects at university and have participated as a critic of student work many, many times.
I don’t seek critique of my own photography but publish on a personal website. I do this because I see my photography as part of an international discussion and I also use them in my day job. I know that there is an interest because I get published a few times a year and have people tell me they know my photography. I have also seen my photos on walls at universities where they are used as references during crits.
Having my photographs online is both personally useful because i frequently refer to them and a contribution to a discussion, occasionally even knowledge creation. A bit like pixls.
I have built up a community of more than 1000 followers on pixelfed.social in approximately one year. Pixelfed is part of the Fediverse like Mastodon.
There is one elderly gentleman among my followers on pixelfed who actually gives me constructive feedback, so that does exist.
Also pixelfed though on a self hosted instance. It’s really hard in the beginning so you might start with a bigger instance or Mastodon. The community is really nice there
do you have one? I think it’s not so easy to set up one
I used a not 100% functional pixelfed on my own instance for some time and getting followers worked better there than on bigger mastodon instances
Running it on an Ubuntu VPS at digital ocean. Following the instructions. But I can’t recommend it. Remote likes and reshares from people you follow are still not shown. It’s kinda lonely to be honest.
I share the photo’s that survive culling/review via Google Photo, but only to family (friends). I have occasionally shared some at DPreview for feedback and have started to do so on 500px. But … what I share publicly is a fraction of what ‘stays in the family’. I like Google Photo’s UI as family can see where pictures have been made or comment back.
I found Facebook to be a good sharing medium because I have so many friends who use it. I use it almost exclusively for photo sharing and people seem to appreciate my wildlife photos over the political ranting and complaining that’s common to the site. FB has also helped when I want to scout out an area where I’ve never visited. I recently joined a wildlife photography site ahead of my visit to South Carolina and people gave me lots of good tips on parks and refuges to check out.
I also post my better shots to Flickr so people can view my photos under better quality.
I haven’t found a good site to get critiques on my photos and most of the time I’ll get a few compliments (which I appreciate) or some very basic comments on rule of thirds or leading lines. I have a local photography club where I can get useful feedback on my images.
All my children have left home so I don’t take family photos anymore so there is no need to share, but the last few were shared via family facebook links.
The photos I take now go on my blog/website. marfell.me.uk
In the past I have asked for critique of photos and the various websites I manage and usually got “Looks good to me” type responses so I have recently joined a camera club. There are competitions where feedback is given on entries. They also have a general facebook group where images can be posted, this tends to be images the author is pleased with or they are trying something new and want encouragement. There is also a critique facebook group where you can specifically ask for comments/suggestions. Other facebook groups get created as needed under the heading of particular projects or styles that are being tried.
During the pandemic they moved to weekly zoom meetings and though in-person meetings have started again zoom attendance is also possible. They are a good bunch.
I need to get back into the habit of meeting up at my local club. They have monthly critiques that were halted during the pandemic but have recently restarted after sorting out the venue. You have a nice website and pics.
I wish we had one around here. Alas, this forum is my only photography-related social gathering. For me, this hobby is a very lonely one (I so wish it were otherwise).
Wherever I find it appropriate. I put it this way because not every photo can be published on every site. A lot of my work doesn’t fit on instagram, so flickr is an obvious choice because it allows to share the content with other sites via BBcode and exposes you to a HUGE audience (my flickr account clocks in at about 100 million hits so far). I have never published on Twitter, but I do so from time to time on Mastodon because I am on a photography-centered instance.
My own site serves a very specific purpose: I sometimes work as a freelancer or get published and I need to show what I do to models and/or editors, so I show very few shots on my site and change the content only when I think that a new photo is worth replacing one already on display. Site traffic is low (between 10 and 50 visitors, between 50 and 300 hits per day), but again: my site is not where I show my work to a wide public, my site is where I fish for cooperation and gigs ;o)
tl;dr start with a flickr account and take it from there
