-5

I would like to know why some images get 3000+ likes on website like 500px. What are the parameters behind those likes?

  1. Composition
  2. Shot mode (M, A, S, P) etc.

I can understand subject and composition matters a lot, but does Mode also matters?

mattdm
  • 143,140
  • 52
  • 417
  • 741
Atul Agarawal
  • 207
  • 4
  • 10
  • 5
    Who cares? Maybe the image owner has just too many friends and the likes are completely irrelevant to the quality of the picture. Did you think about that? – kazanaki Jan 31 '17 at 23:18
  • 2
    I believe it matters, Its a commercial website as well. People do purchase pics from there. – Atul Agarawal Jan 31 '17 at 23:24
  • Could you please expand on how the mode might matter? – osullic Jan 31 '17 at 23:32
  • It has a lot to do with subject matter, composition, lighting, post processing etc. and nothing to do with shot mode. Have a look at this question and see if it answers your question. what makes a photo a good photo – MikeW Jan 31 '17 at 23:48
  • I feel mode also matters, let's say if a shot has taken in Manual mode which requires all three (iso, aperture, shutter speed) settings to be done. So photographer should have excellent understanding of those settings, one f+- will over and under expose the shot. Rest in aperture and shutter speed one parameter is technically derived from camera itself, based on that shutter or aperture is decided..one can adjust only ISO. – Atul Agarawal Feb 01 '17 at 00:12
  • Possible duplicate of What makes a photo a good photo? – 10 Replies Feb 01 '17 at 01:19
  • 1
    @AtulAgarawal I don't follow. You can control exposure with exposure compensation in A or S modes for example. Why would manual mode shots be better? Unless you're saying in general that better photographers tend to use manual. In which case the better images are a result of better photographers, not manual mode itself. – MikeW Feb 01 '17 at 02:58
  • 3
    What makes a photo good and what makes a photo popular on a social media site such as 500pix aren't necessarily the same thing. – Michael C Feb 01 '17 at 06:26
  • Better photography gets better likes, period – Janardan S Feb 01 '17 at 10:52
  • @Atul just because, in A or S exposure modes, the camera "decides" one of the exposure parameters doesn't, in and of itself, make a photo inferior in any way. – osullic Feb 01 '17 at 13:48

2 Answers2

7

The parameters which matter:

  • The number of people that see the picture.
  • The number of people who think that photo is worth a like.

Whether or not an individual considers a photo worth a like is dependent on a lot of things:

  • the quality of the photo (and how important the viewer thinks that is)

  • the subject matter (and whether that interests the viewer)

  • the mood of the viewer

Very few objective properties of the image will be relevant.

Harry Harrison
  • 2,337
  • 2
  • 12
  • 20
3

I'd argue that what makes a photo good isn't necessarily what makes it popular on a photo sharing site like 500px.

I'd consider most of the "top" content on 500px to be essentially viral content which could be popular for any number of reasons like humor, politics, special effects use, surprise, popular location, and so on - which may have nothing to do with if the image is good or not. In addition, the 500px site itself has algorithms that determine what content will reach each user on each page - again which may have more to do with the viral nature of an image and less to do with it's actual quality.

To directly answer your question, images are popular on 500px and similar sites based on the specific criteria that the site employs. For more information on 500px specifically see their help article on Pulse and Views.

dpollitt
  • 46,525
  • 20
  • 136
  • 266
  • 1
    Thanks for sharing Pulse and Views: 500px mentioned following comment " That's part of Pulse's secret sauce. Each vote is assigned a unique value, based on the voters' and the photographer's activity on 500px"

    I believe above factor is also one of the most important one.

     – Atul Agarawal Feb 01 '17 at 01:51
  • 1
    @AtulAgarawal - Yeah exactly, they aren't going to give away that secret so you can't game the system. – dpollitt Feb 01 '17 at 01:52