The Rise and Rise Of Web 2.0 Photojournalism

[Stuart Cosgrove]

Each week brings new innovations in the arena of online photo-sharing. Many belived that Flickr and the declining Photobucket would solve all our online needs, but the reverse has proved to be true, as new sites dig deeper into the passion centres of people's lives.

BBC online has pioneered brodcaster-led photo-sites and its now commonplace for sudden snow-storms or flash floods to be captured by viewers, whose user-generated images enrich the news. But the plot thickens. The Scottish photojournal site Blipfoto has already been featured in 38minutes, and another related but very different site Fotopedia is just out of Beta. Both sites have smart subtitles which seek to capture their point of difference

Blipfoto is the daily journal for everyone and Fotopedia is images for humanity.

What appears to be happening is that people want more than the big, noisy undifferentiated photo-sites irrespective of their tagging capabilities, and are migrating or in many cases linking and 'streaming' to more boutique sites.

But perhaps the key difference is community-building.

Unlike professional photography sites where works of individual creatives such as the immeasurably smart Eric Lafforgue are at the high-end, many people want a place to share, exchange, judge and be judged.

So as Flickr becomes ever-more polluted by cats-to-porn photography has the next generation of smart sites arrived?

If anyone has other links to great 'boutique', journal or themed digital photography sites please post below.


Image above from North Korea (c) Eric Lafforgue all rights reserved.

[Joe Tree]

I know I'm biased, but I think Stuart's hit the nail on the head. Many Blipfoto contributors also have Flickr accounts, but view it as a purely functional service – it doesn't drive them to create and engage like Blip does (in most cases it's just a place to store their 'blip rejects').

When a community is underpinned by a simple shared common purpose, it connects individuals who would probably never connect in the real world.

There's very little 'woah! cool picture!' stuff on Blip – photography's obviously key to what we're doing, but the images are a means to an end, that end being a part of a thriving, supportive community.