Press release: Introducing Photocrowd

11/22/2015 ISO 1200 Magazine 0 Comments

A few days ago we received this press release from Photocrowd

Online photography community Photocrowd.com is on a mission to rethink the humble photo contest and turn it into a truly rewarding experience.

The idea for Photocrowd has its roots in the teaching practices of its co-founders, professional photographers Mike Betts and Liam Bailey. Their students were motivated by the regular assignments that were set for them – images were given group feedback by the class as well as a critique from Mike or Liam. But when they looked for a site that offered this kind of valuable learning experience online, they couldn’t find anything – and Photocrowd was born.

Photocrowd ‘challenges’ (as they call them) harness the power and opinion of the crowd, and their novel approach to rating images has generated an impressive 15 million ratings from the Photocrowd community so far.

As well as the crowd ratings, challenges are judged separately by an expert chosen from their panel of over 100 distinguished professionals, including well-known names such as Matt Kloskowski, Jack Hollingsworth and Robert Caplin.

The expert also writes a series of informative image reviews, which are devoured by the site’s users who enjoy the insight into how our professionals’ brains work.

The combination has proven addictive, with over 100,000 images submitted to their challenges so far, and the community now spanning 126 countries.

At any time there’s a wide variety of challenges to enter, with current subjects including Autumn Colours, In the Rain, Theatre and Dance, and Textures.

Winners get exposure that can’t be bought, on sites such as The Guardian, The Huffington Post, and The Daily Mail Online, and prizes come from top photography brands like Lowepro, Alamy, B+H, Manfrotto and Peak Design.

New site features and upgrades are being launched regularly, with the promise of new user profiles soon, and a much-anticipated groups feature in the pipeline.

Photocrowd founder and CEO Mike Betts says: “Most photo contests give no feedback to 99% of the people that enter, and you never find out where you were placed, how you could improve, or why the winning images were chosen.

We set out to design photo challenges that motivate photographers to shoot more - which is really the only way to get better - and provide a platform for our users to benchmark themselves against some of the best photographers in the world.”