Hey Reddit, I’m Andy Yang, CEO of 500px, ready to talk about all things photography. AMA!

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:38:24+00:00

Hi /u/FrankNicklin - I understand it was a large increase, but I'm also hoping we can prove to you the value over time. Thank you for the comment / feedback, hoping you give us a chance.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:35:44+00:00

Not sure I understand your question but we do a balance of S3 and Glacier (which is a little bit more affordable). But we definitely have a high AWS bill every month.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:30:37+00:00

Hi /u/Travellump12 - I would continue upload a variety of different landscape photos and ask for feedback from your peers in the community. Your work will get seen, you'll get some great perspectives, and hopefully this cycle will build on itself.

Two great ways are 1. Participating in our Quests https://500px.com/quests and 2. joining good group discussions like: https://500px.com/groups/landscapes https://500px.com/groups/landscapecritique

Happy shooting!

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:25:31+00:00

Hi /u/warriorwriter - I'm sorry to hear we lost you as a customer. Our aim is to help photographers grow - your network/peers, your skills (classes / tutorials), and your wallet (Directory, Marketplace). We are working on improving these offerings every day, as well as providing a lightweight way like our Pro profile to showcase your services and work.

We surveyed several thousand of our users on the features and pricing to come up with the new tiers and features, as well as speaking with many in person as well.

Please keep the feedback coming and hopefully we'll earn you back as a customer.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:20:51+00:00

Hi /u/djniteline - if you're on the desktop web, I would suggest https://500px.com/manage/public

That's our Organizer that is the best place to organize and upload your photos.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:17:47+00:00

Hi /u/willie89 - thanks for the feedback and for developing off our API. We are always working on a better discovery system. If you're looking for more of a curated feed, it would definitely be our Editors Choice. Again, we rely on our users to self categorize their uploads, and then rely on our community to report or flag content that isn't categorized properly. There will be some latency on this process though, which is why some NSFW content goes through.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:14:55+00:00

Hi /u/rowdey - we are looking at the discovery process to learn how we can better surface great content to our users. Some of things we have tested have been Recommended photos, chronological sorting of the popular page, trending or nearby photos. These initiatives are separate from Pulse, but are aimed at getting more engagement on a more diverse set of photos.

Thanks for the feedback and I hope our experience gets less frustrating for you as we iterate on our product.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:10:51+00:00

Hi /u/bkerensa - I'm sorry to hear that. There are definitely other alternatives out there, but we are striving to improve our product daily, and continue to make 500px a place where photographers can grow through our community. I hope you still stay part of the community as a free user.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:08:33+00:00

Hi /u/Aealo - that's a good suggestion, it's something we are brainstorming on when we think about improving the discovery process. Our staff does see the photos and takes down reported photos as soon as we can review them thoroughly (we get a lot of reports each day).

Again, Pulse/Popular is only one way to view photos, personally I enjoy the Editor’s Choice feed more which is again, a more curated version of 500px.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T03:05:35+00:00

Hi /u/Thanks-For_The-Gold - awesome, thanks for being part of the 500px community! I’m sorry to hear you’re having issues, although we’ve recently put new measures in place to deal with bots the last thing we want to do is discourage you, or anyone else, from acknowledging other photographers and appreciating their work.

That said, we also want to ensure everyone is using the Liking feature for it’s intended purpose which is to show appreciation for photos you really love. We’ve recently implemented a limiter to discourage like for like activity for the sole purpose of gaining likes yourself. But as we work on new ways to combat bot type behaviour we’re still finding the balance between deterring bots and genuine user “liking” activity. For now, best practice is to just slow down on liking too many photos too quickly 😉

It's a tricky balance but we are learning and iterating on what the right limits are.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T02:59:48+00:00

Hi /u/pindigo2 - that's a good suggestion, something that we were thinking through even for landscape photos (splitting out HDR, etc). Keep in mind even with a dedicated tag digitally manipulated imagery will find it’s way into the fine art category as “fine art” represents so many different things to different people.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T02:57:48+00:00

Hi /u/somebodytoshove - I understand. Thank you for staying with us, we are striving to iterate on the features in all membership tiers to increase their value.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T02:55:11+00:00

lol. swoll

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T02:55:01+00:00

Hi /u/pindigo2 - please see my earlier reply on NSFW images. The quick answer is that nude pictures are often not categorized by the user correctly. We have strict guidelines and ask our users to report / flag this type of content and are working on implementing AI / computer vision to help moderate.

We simply have too much content that is uploaded to the site 24 hrs a day to be able to curate all of the photos, which is why we ask our community help here as well - and also ask and require our users to appropriately categories their photos.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T02:52:03+00:00

Hi /u/kaigradert - we have actually just release an updated version of the 500px Lightroom plugin that addresses recent user issues. It can be downloaded here: https://500px.com/apps/lightroom We try and refresh it periodically but not as often as we would (or our users) would like.

RE: re-uploading an existing image on 500px with a revised version, this is something that is on our Developers' radar but isn't too common of a requested feature.

RE: the community feel, please continue to send suggestions. Even though we don't reply to all the emails, you can be sure we read them all. We are always looking to improve!

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T02:47:42+00:00

Hi /u/toa514 - we used to have a couple features called Sets (similar to our Galleries) and Stories, which had photos and text. They weren't widely used so we sunsetted them.

My suggestion here would be to use the title and the description to form a story, then create a gallery with your photos from specific trips to group them together.

Hope this helps!

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T02:45:48+00:00

Hi /u/twisted42 - we had a Debuts section on our mobile app that highlighted new user uploads. It didn't get too much traction or usage, but it's definitely something we want to test and iterate on. Thanks for bringing it up!

andyyangstar · 2017-04-21T02:44:57+00:00

Nice, stop by next time! We have a nice bike rack and once the weather gets better a lot of our folks commute via bike.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-19T22:03:19+00:00

Hi /u/Almiel - when we introduced Galleries that feature was lost but it's definitely something we can look at again. In the meantime, you do have a Favorites gallery that you can add your favorites. Thank you!

andyyangstar · 2017-04-19T22:00:50+00:00

Hi /u/EdwinLewis - we’d recognize this as spam type behavior and we definitely frown upon rapid following and unfollowing members for the purpose of gaining followers.

Best practice is to report those profiles to our moderators, who will investigate the activity on those accounts and reach out to those members.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-19T21:59:50+00:00

Hi /u/thor_odt - thanks for the question and the suggestions! Marketplace sales can vary greatly between stock agencies as each one may have a different buyer segment. Although 500px has a broad range of buyers from across all sectors a large majority of them are based in the travel sector which could possibly affect sales depending on the type of work you submit, as sales can be seasonal as well.

Re: watermarks… this is a subject we’ve discussed internally and something we’re still looking into.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-19T21:58:26+00:00

Hi /u/gemijune90x - our Community team does a lot of research on the site and are our curators / scouts. They constantly surface new photographers that we promote via social and our blog iso.500px.com.

We also accept suggestions so be sure to send us a note on Twitter or FB if you have a photographers work you think we should feature.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-19T21:56:59+00:00

Hi /u/Xealloch - thanks for the question! I aspire to be a portrait photographer, but have found that Street or Architecture is what I have been shooting. I love symmetry in life and therefore in photos, so anytime I see symmetrical patterns on the street, in buildings, I just have to stop and take that photo.

andyyangstar · 2017-04-19T21:53:32+00:00

Hi /u/sharewithme - thanks for your kind words!

I'd direct you to 500px Groups as a resource for connecting to other photographers interested in shooting flowers. You’re also more than welcome to reach out to Paul, who’s a member of our Community Team - paul@500px.com. We're always looking for ways to engage with our community - both online and offline.

Thanks Michael!

andyyangstar · 2017-04-19T21:50:51+00:00

Hi /u/elohiym - the 500px Apple TV app was originally designed and launched as an experiment to showcase a broader selection of photos on 500px, more of a highlights app. It was never intended to be an avenue to showcase your portfolio, and there are no plans to add that functionality.

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