What happened to all the photography discussion forums?

alannoone

I pulled back from photography about 5 years ago when my child was born, I just didnt have time.
I am now getting a bit more free time and getting back into it, but the online landscape has changed entirely.

• Boards photography is a shadow of its former self, with perhaps a post every few days at most.
• photographyireland.net is still hosted but competely desolate, no posts for years.
• steves digicams is gone.
• dpreview is a bit more active but nothing like it used to be, it seems like a small hard core contingent left keeping it going.
• Almost all of the interesting flickr groups are now gone.

Where is everyone sharing their photos for discussion, critique and generally getting the social aspect of the hobby?

Reddit seems to be very popular, but their photography sub is very unfocused, very random and not particularly fun to use.
It seems the social online aspect of the hobby has all but disappeared. Its a shame really, it was a great part of the past time.

ablelocks

interested in this too - boards has always been my goto but it is oh so quiet

I've read a bit about Cara app as an alternative to instagram - for the artist by the artist and no AI - might be something to look at - as far as i know, photography posts are welcome, although it's for all types of visual art.

Gregor Samsa

I think Facebook took over to a certain extent. There's a multitude of brand-dedicated groups and genre-dedicated groups. But FB isn't a good experience when it actually comes to properly looking at an appreciating a photograph, and you have to deal with Facebook people and comments - not to mention the "algorithm" that seems hell-bent on pushing content you've no interest in on you. I abandoned it last year.

Boards in general is a shadow of its former self. Kudos to the regular posters who are keeping the Random Photos thread alive. Unfortunately, my own contributions are more sporadic. But there isn't even an active moderator here any more.

Poor DP Review hasn't really recovered from the panic last year when Amazon said they were shutting it down. Staff and users left. In the end, Amazon relented and sold it as a going concern, so it's still alive - but I don't know if they got the users back. The age profile there seems to be ancient, and they don't seem to be attracting new, younger photographers.

Mister Vain

I think it has been in decline for a while now. A lot of the FB groups are dead. Fstoppers is dead too. I use Behance and 500px.

Kurooi

Join a decent photography club that's where the fun is at. Closed whatsapps, flickr pages, events.

Adrian.Sadlier

Amateur Photograpy Magazine used to have a good Bulletin Board, but they closed it down. Since then, most of the core users migrated to https://snappers-social-club.proboards.com/

secman

Me personally, I put the camera away and got back into cycling, so that meant I changed forums to follow. Haven't picked the camera up since. But really enjoying the cycling, anyways that's my excuse.

TomSweeney

It is sad, this forum used to be hopping.

I remember the hype when the Canon 5D Mark 2 was coming out.

And there was great tutorial threads too.

Borderfox

It used to be great, really enjoyed the forum.

Me personally I changed occupation so was busy with that and didn't really take a lot of pictures

AnCatDubh

I think the average hobby photographer that would have frequented these and other forums mentioned mostly use their phones now, and hence there is very little to discuss.

It used to be any trip to an urban center and you'd see a bunch of heavily laden Canon, Nikon, or Sony heads but on holidays recently in a large Irish tourist town and I think I saw maybe 2 DSLR type cameras over the course of being out and about for the week. Phones do a terrific job for the average Joe too. Hard to argue with that IMHO.

I have taken out the camera gear a little more recently, but even I didn't bring it on holidays. Good phone camera was going to be good enough. I recall the wisdom of Chase Jarvis back in the day on the debate as to what was the best camera, and the answer according to him was "the one you have with you".

All that said, nice to see this forum still with a heartbeat even if at a much slower pace and regulars do seem to be still about even if lurking for the most part.