Greg Wallis

Once, a few years ago now, from the nascent photo sharing market was thrown Flickr. It was different, refreshing, and very much the modish choice for the IT in-crowd; simply, it was outstandingly cool. Then it grew and grew, many things changed and it finally came out of beta. Never intentioned for professional and business use — even, weirdly, with a Pro and paid-for account — features were added, complexity grew and, worst of all, it got bought out by Yahoo.

Now lots of professional photographers use it to display their work, but run the risk of account deletion should some jobsworth at Flickr HQ decide it was being used for promotional purposes. And this has happened, and not infrequently, either. For the amateur and enthusiast Flickr is a great choice and the basic and free account is a sensible option, but I’m looking at this from a pro and semi-pro viewpoint.

In terms of page load speed, things seemed to have slowed down. The graphical look can’t be customised in any way, though as it’s not meant for anything other than amateur use this can perhaps be forgiven. But it’s looking decidedly old-hat, now. I’m also concerned that having a Flickr stream, professionally, may well devalue the images and the photographer in the eyes of potential clients, though that may be stating the obvious.

Are there any decent alternatives? Yes, unquestionably. A parallel photo sharing service is the little known French site Ipernity. In many ways far superior to Flickr and has seen droves of former (and ususally disgruntled) Flickr members setting up shop on a more flexible though similar platform. Although very much worth a look and with a closer-knit and very friendly community, it still has the same downsides to public photo sharing but nevertheless it’s fast, free (with a paid option that I’ve yet to see the point of) and reliable. It’s also partly customisable, though not to the degree that most people would wish and often seems unfinished (it still carries a beta tag). But it also has one fab feature that seems unique: you can upload mp3 audio files that can then be used as a soundtrack for a full-screen slideshow and is probably the best of its kind anywhere, and this alone makes it a bit of a sexy choice. It’s a hidden jewel and very worthy of consideration.

Professional alternatives? Many. But I’ve never been happy with any of them, not until I discovered SmuMug. No free account, which is likely a good thing, and three paid-for options which can either be settled annually on monthly, with one naturally being cheaper. SmugMug rocks. I’ll say that again, SmugMug ROCKS. No, it’s not perfect, it’s a little clunky in some aspects, confusing in others. But it can be completely customised, have domain name URLs pointed at it and has an incredible user community for help and advice. It’s aimed at the marketing of photographs and if you’re in the US this would work brilliantly. As I’m in the UK, it doesn’t have the same attraction and I don’t wish to sell my work that way, either, so that’s fine.

And if you’re into video streaming, and want your productions to be embeddable in a web page without branding, then SmugMug is the best choice I’ve ever seen. Their Flash based player is brilliant, attractive, simple to configure and streams HD video like lightning. Oh yes, and with no bandwidth and usage limits, either. YouTube is fine, but for those requiring a more polished and professional option, SmugMug rules.

Although I’ve only skimmed over what’s on offer, and I’ll probably write more in-depth reviews at a later date, the two best alternatives to Flickr are — in my humble opinion — Ipernity (the free one) and SmugMug (the paid one). Me? Oh, I have both.

Here’s an example of Ipernity’s slideshow, showing a collection of my monochrome images with soundtrack. Just check out how quickly this loads:

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/gregwallis/album/193028/show

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