What is photocritiq.com?
photocritiQ.com is for photographers to exhibit their work to one another (as well as to the rest of the world) and to engage one another for mutual self-improvement, advice, encouragment, and support.
Why another site for exhibiting and critiquing photos, and discussing photography? We've asked that ourselves a few times over the last couple of months while we have been developing this site. The answer is that we believe that nobody has provided what we would want ourselves. We decided to try our hand. For one of us (Brian), it is Take 2.
Some of the things that you will find that are different about photocritiQ.com:
We have designed this site to be self-effacing. There are too many narcissistic photography sites that are primarily about themselves, and only incidentally about photography. This site is not about photocritiQ.com or its owners. It is about your photographs, and photography. If anybody gets to be a narcissist here, it is you. This site is not about us, us, us. It is about you, you, you.
Book designers often say that the best design of a book is one that you don't notice. People buy books to read them, not to admire the work of the book designer. The same is true of web-sites; but you couldn't guess this by looking at most of the big photography web-sites. An overriding design idea here is that the site should efface itself, that it should recede and give the spotlight to the photographs and the photographers. This isn't another site where every photograph is overwhelmed by lots of links, text, and "features". Cool features are, well, cool, but on a photography site they shouldn't interfere with viewing photographs. (But we have some cool features, if you look.)
An aspect of self-effacement that is worth mentioning separately is that the site Galleries will have no banner advertising. You can't say that you are putting the spotlight on the photographs and then stick banner ads next to them. The purpose of a banner ad is to get you to exit the site by clicking on the ad. We don't want you to exit the site. We want you to look at the photographs, think about them, discuss them, and learn from them. And we can't get you to do that if we are depending for income on making you notice and click on ads. We didn't make the site self-effacing to give the spotlight to ads.
We make no secret of the fact that this site is intended to generate income for its owners, but we don't want to do it by sticking ads on your photos. Your photos should not have to compete with advertising. At the beginning, there will be no advertising on the site at all. If we ever have any advertising, it will never be on any page whose purpose is to present someone's work. If you join the site and participate, we'll eventually ask you to subscribe and pay us a small fee, but whether you pay us or not, there won't be any advertising on the photographs that you post here. We won't punish you for not subscribing by plastering your work with ads, or making you look at ads instead of photographs.
A major aim of the site is to let photographers meet each other and offer each other advice, support, and friendship. We can't predict all the ways in which photographers participating in the site will want to coalesce into communities and sub-communities. Besides self-effacement, the other main principle of the site is that creating groups should be fluid and effortless. Groups should be frictionless.
On photocritiQ.com, groups are called "CritiQ Circles", and a group is created automatically whenever a photographer tags his or her photo with a word or phrase. On this site, a group and a tag are the same thing. Put the tag "landscape" on a photo, and voila the "landscape" CritiQ Circle exists and the photo is up for discussion in that circle! Any photo that is tagged with "landscape" becomes a topic for discussion in the "landscape" CritiQ Circle. Besides the photos, that circle can be the venue for any other topic that people interested in the "landscape" photographs want to discuss.
To create a CritiQ Circle for a topic, nobody has to go out of his way to create a group or become an administrator. You never have to request anybody to create a group, or convince anybody. Nobody owns a group. There are no moderators or special users. You don't have to "join" a group. A new group can be created at any time by simply tagging a photo. If you want a group about photos taken with Lomos in swimming pools, stick "Swimming Pool Lomography", or, "SPL", or "Lomosplash", or any other name you can dream up, on some photos, and don't look back. You can make up any tags you want. Create CritiQ Circles by tagging photos. Join them by just showing up.
Self-effacement and frictionless CritiQ Circles are our two innovations, but we think together they create a
unique site. Try it out, and let us know what you think. Start by signing up then go to your Profile to start your own gallery. Or start by a viewing the galleries of other members and participating in the discussion.
Brian and Cindy Mottershead
Monday, December 4, 2006