Roll Your Own

This is a chapter from the book A Lesser Photographer.

There will always be another online service begging for you to share your photos. They ask you to trade privacy, image rights, and image quality for the privilege of putting your work in front of a lot of viewers with little friction.

Not enough photographers assess the benefits of using these services before jumping right in to the next new one that comes along.

Most of these services will not help you tell a story, effectively edit, or showcase your skills in the best possible light. If you wish to tell a story to the public and avoid the constantly changing, often-onerous terms of service, you need to own the experience of viewing your images.

Take advantage of social networking to call attention to your work and communicate with your fans, but always bring your viewer back to a place you can tailor to create the experience you want your viewers to have.

Don’t offer your best work to an environment that changes with the whims of a company that almost certainly doesn’t have the interests of your viewers at heart.