On Pixoto

I love Pixoto -it is "an online community where photographers compete to have the best images in their category."

It's a place where you can upload pictures, and within minutes/hours - get some sort of feedback from other photographers how "good" an image is. Mainly used by photographers (I think), some bad, some good, even some are pros!

This is how it works.

1.You sign up for an account

2.Upload a picture, pick which category it is in, your picture gets challenged by those within the same category, like landscape, travel, fine-art, sports etc (not sub-category, like which sports category it is in).

3.Irrespective of whether you upload or not, you get to vote on "Image Duel", where you pick which of 2 pictures you like better. Loads of other people do this (see #4 on why), and your picture quickly gets a score, to be fine tuned in the next days/weeks to come. Typically, it's pretty hard to get 600 and above. The highest score I see is maybe 750ish or so. Anything below 400, will typically fail to proceed - unless you keep paying for it to be challenged. 

Note: scoring really depends on those who are online at that moment voting. Sometimes, I get a picture stuck at 100 or 200+. I wait till next day, or a few hours later, and try to buy more challenges, it gets better. Sometimes I try a different category, and works. Often, a bad image stops no matter how many challenges you buy or resubmit.



4.How it works is, you need credits to upload (10), and if a picture fails to proceed to more duels (typically when you lose 50% of the duels) - u need five to get it to be challenged 3 more times. So people will vote to earn credits. So the system automatically pits a new picture with say an existing picture with a score of 100. If you win, they will pick a better picture of say 200, so the picture very quickly finds its place amongst its peers. You can read more on the technical bits on scoring, how they treat people abusers etc. But it's a system I think works ok, easy to easy and fun!

5.Awards! You get awards if your picture gets into top 10 of the day (of that category), if there are at least 50 pictures uploaded. Also awards for top 10% of the week, top 20% of the month etc. It's fun, encouraging and ego inflating to win awards! Yes, I've link my Awards page, just to give an idea.

What's good?

- Easy to use
- Quick feedback on how good a picture is - from other photographers. Every picture gets voted on, so theoretically a chance to get good points.
- Fun to get Awards! Great incentive to go on shooting better pictures.
- Great place to get ideas, look at why you like certain pictures (by others), and why not others, and so far fairly inspiring (for me)!

What's not so good? 

- Don't get caught up too much on this. Don't shoot to win credits or awards, they are after all decided by others. It's a fun start, and something to do that doesn't cost a cent! But don't let others dictate your own style, and don't just copy others. Eventually, you'll want to find your own niche, your own style - although I'm not there yet!

Keep shooting!