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This reminds me of 500px. I used to be a huge fan of 500px. It was the most beautiful photography site on the internet, designed with attention to every tiny de
by dbrgn 6y ago
This reminds me of 500px. I used to be a huge fan of 500px. It was the most beautiful photography site on the internet, designed with attention to every tiny detail. It allowed you to share your photos under a CC license, presented them beautifully and had fantastic curated feeds with photos by fantastic photographers.
In 2018 they were acquired by an investor company and partnered exclusively with Getty. As a contributor, you were now pushed to "earn money with your pictures", CC licenses were discouraged and (I think) eventually removed. The site stopped getting optimized for aesthetics, it was now getting optimized for selling stock photos. I deleted all my photos and left.
I hope this doesn't happen to Unsplash. But I'm not optimistic.
- StavrosK 6y agoOh man, 500px used to be amazing. The photos were just beautiful. As you say, it died at some point (the quality started declining and they pushed some user-hostile stuff) and I never went back.
- teryyy 6y agohttps://www.pexels.com/ https://www.pexels.com/ is another similar site, owned by Canva which seems to have kept its quality through the years.
- minxomat 6y agoPexels is the best community for people who want to share their photos/videos (CC0). It's the worst community for monetising that in any way.
- dbrgn 6y ago> It's the worst community for monetising that in any way. That sounds fantastic, I'll take a look! Edit: It's not CC0 though, right? The Pexels License looks similar to the Unsplash License.
- dannyw 6y ago(Disclosure: I work for Canva) You are allowed to do anything with Pexels photos, except 4 conditions listed on the plain English licensing page: https://www.pexels.com/license/ https://www.pexels.com/license/ In short, • don’t portray identifiable people in a bad way • don’t sell unaltered, make a change first • don’t imply endorsement • don’t redistribute on other sites. Commercial use is perfectly fine. You don’t need to attribute, but our photographers (and we) prefer it.
- rustc 6y agoActual answer for GP: no, it's not CC0.
- ipsum2 6y ago> don’t portray identifiable people in a bad way Not a lawyer, but this is so arbitrary that any sensible company wouldn't touch Pexels. What is considered bad? If the person is put next to some junk food? Cigarettes? An abortion clinic ad? Oil company? This is the same issue with the No Evil license: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not_Evil%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Crockford#%22Good,_not...
- nitrogen 6y agoIf you really need a picture of a human, you could just...get that person's permission instead of whining about free not being "free."
- busymom0 6y agoI don't see it as whining. These companies are in the business of providing photos for people to be able to use. If their TOS is so vague that one simply cannot use any photos without knowing what the TOS allows or not - then the core purpose of the company has failed. If FB and others are to be used as an example, these TOS are written vague and broad on purpose.
- anthropodie 6y agoSomeone mentioned yet another alternative which I have used previously but had completely forgotten https://pixabay.com https://pixabay.com
- sdoering 6y agoI switched to pixabay from unsplash when looking for stock images for presentations. Nowadays I nearly never use unsplash. Maybe because I don't look for landscape that much. Because unsplash actually made my desktop backgrounds look good.
- imagequeen 6y agoWith this acquisition, there are no independent free photo sites anymore! Maybe free photo time is up?
- shawn81 6y agoVecteezy.com is still independently owned :)
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIt just reaffirms that one should not put all money on one horse, and to keep a copy of all of your work under your own management. With photography that's manageable, with e.g. youtube that can become challenging if you're a prolific video maker (especially nowadays with 4K, even 8K video footage). Anyway, always have an exit.
- etrautmann 6y agoI’m not sure I follow? Storing a rendered final copy of your work is not prohibitively expensive given the cost of local storage, and is small in comparison to the raw footage which most creators presumably don’t just delete?
- anthropodie 6y agoI am guessing OP is not referring to images per se but platform. For example, if you have all your 10K followers only on Instagram, you should definitely have exit like owning your own blog. Your followers should at least have a place to find you in case you loose access to Instagram for some reason.
- michaelt 6y agoFor a lot of casual photographers, the version on their phone is the original and the version in the cloud is the backup. And if they run out of space on their phone, they delete the original. Of course, to professional and semi-professional photographers, such a haphazard approach would be unimaginable :)
- pferde 6y agopixelfed.org is another great platform - and it's powered by ActivityPub, so you can host your own and federate it with others.
- dbrgn 6y agoI can warmly recommend Pixelfed, it would be great to get some talented photographers on board. However, it's more like Instagram and not really suited for uploading a high-quality high-resolution portfolio. It's also not really suited for finding photos for a project.
- pferde 6y agoYes, that is true, although it all depends on what content people update, and how well they tag their photos. I can easily imagine a pixelfed instance dedicated to sharing high-quality stock photos, with strict rules about photo quality, and how to post and tag the photos.
- tomcooks 6y agoIf only the server wasn't as demanding, it's a beautiful project and there are plenty of clients that experience-wise are similar to Instagram
- rpdillon 6y agoReading through the press release, this really stood out: > In 2016, we first met the Getty Images team. We weren’t sure they would see the world the same way we did given their business was largely built on licensing. Over years of conversations, however, we learned about the level of respect they had for the Unsplash community and the rights of creators to choose how and where their imagery is made available. While this is written as though they had initially misunderstood Getty, it doesn't clarify at all how things have evolved. My unvarnished reading is "We were worried about Getty because they're all about copyright, but after talking for years, we've learned they're really all about copyright." After reading this, I think your lack of optimism is warranted.
- tertius 6y ago> "We were worried about Getty because they're all about copyright, but after talking for years and waiting for our daily uniques to grow, they've agreed to our terms re: valuation." FIFY
- fastball 6y ago> "We were worried that selling are souls to the copyright czars would not be worth it, but after eating in to their business for years they've finally made us an offer we can't refuse."
- ljm 6y agoThe cynic in me says that they were just beaten into submission and after 5 years they said 'fuck it', because they weren't getting any better offers.
- lovedswain 6y agoThe quoted paragraph reminds me of something I once read from a blog post by the WhatsApp team
- mwambua 6y ago> the rights of creators to choose how and where their imagery is made available I didn't know that there's any way to control where the images show up. Isn't it just a free-for-all on Unsplash?
- dalbasal 6y agoTo me, this feels like such a new/old media clash point.
- pmlnr 6y ago500px also disabled it's API when this happened.
- passivate 6y agoIMHO, it is hard to run a sustainable business around sharing pictures.
- Boltgolt 6y agoAnd then there's Instagram, who only did square photos and nothing else for years
- goldenchrome 6y agoI think you're misrepresenting Instagram. Instagram is a personal PR platform where images are the primary vehicle. In that sense Instagram is closer to Twitter (text-based PR dissemination) than Unsplash.
- mkr-hn 6y agoUnsplash mostly served two groups: 1: people who uploaded as lead generation for professional photography, or some other product or service 2: people who just thought it was cool when someone used one of their photos The only difference between it and Instagram is Unsplash didn't allow text images or videos.
- goldenchrome 6y agoI guess because this is Hacker News, you're technically correct. From an engineering perspective, you're right that the two platforms share many similarities. But from a business perspective they're completely different. Instagram is where normal people go to show off their life and absorb the lives of others via images. Unsplash is for photographers and consumers of stock photography. As a result of these differences, they have completely different business models, user experiences, and growth trajectories.
- postit 6y agoSad to hear. I just deleted all my photos from there and closed my account.
- moeedm 6y agoThat’s the business of stock photos. Unsplash managed to stick around because they provided free high quality images that were more “real” looking than stock photos. It was supported by ads, which I’m sure kept the site running but when Getty knocks on your door and offers to buy you out ... it’s hard to say no. The cycle will continue. In its place there will be a new Unsplash which will offer the same + a bit more until it gets bought out too.
- glenstein 6y agoUnfortunate but I think you are very right. For my part, I very much do want to find the next Unplash, with a good F-droid app to look at wonderful free high quality images. I'm ready to ride whatever the next wave is in this cycle.
- levifig 6y agoTo be clear, Unsplash never provided images: they created a website that accepted user submissions, that's it. All content in Unsplash is user generated. What bothers me about this sale is exactly this: Unsplash cashed in on their user submissions without guaranteeing their users (and use!) would be protected and perpetuated. This is equivalent of me building a little lemonade stand, inviting a neighbor that makes a good lemonade but doesn't have a very visible stand to come give away their lemonade on my stand, and then selling the entire stand (with lemonade) to Lemonade Store down the street.
- vertis 6y agoI wrote a bunch of articles for a community blog/magazine a while back that had a lot of others in the community doing the same thing. Then the "owner" turned around and sold it to some nameless person that wanted to profit from it. She patted herself on the back and moved onto building another community thing. I removed my articles and moved on. It's a real shame, she's very talented, but I struggle to engage with any of her work now because I keep looking for where she's going to try and profit from community participation. I wish her no ill, but it was a reminder to not treat things as a not-for-profit if they don't have clear governance to back that up.
- 6y ago
- datavirtue 6y agoBut, but....the CEO showered them in flattering praise. Everything is going to be wonderful. We should just throw anti-trust out the window. It's a mess.
- imagequeen 6y agoHave you seen www.scop.io they focus on diverse artists and have a great community @scopioimages