How to Organize My Online Profile

[ElNico]

I'm currently in the midst of tackling a large backlog of un-uploaded and unedited photos from past photoshoots over the last 2 years or so, and I'm finding myself struggling with the question of how exactly to upload these pictures once I'm finished with them, and of how many I need to edit before I'm ready to make a "proper" upload. Allow me to explain.

First off, when it comes to having a "professional" online portfolio that I use when approaching new models in a serious capacity, or for when I just want to put my best foot forward, I currently plan to use my Model Mayhem profile for that. That's where I plan to upload the best of my photos, and the profile I plan to keep "trimmed" to continue to include only the best as I add photos from more shoots I do over time. Having a place to do that is not the difficult part. The issue is where to put the rest of my stuff. I do photography primarily for fun, and with that in mind, I don't want to be limited in the number of photos I can upload. I don't want to have to limit myself to posting only 1-5 photos of (for example) a particular outfit in a particular photoshoot, much less have to skip uploading some sets entirely (or remove a set later) for the sake of keeping my total number of photos under (for example) 100. If I have a dozen photos for a given outfit that I all think are good and worth showing off, or that I just LIKE, I want to be able to host all of them in some capacity.

I currently have accounts on Model Mayhem, Instagram, and Flickr. I'll lay out what I see as the pros and cons of each.

For Model Mayhem, it just doesn't strike me as an appropriate place to upload tons of photos. There is (if I recall) a limit on the total number of photos you can have, and the site has a serious-business connotation that makes me think that uploading too many photos from the same set would come across as unprofessional. I've certainly never seen anyone else do that there. A photographer might have 10+ images on their profile of a single model, but not 10+ images of each of 4 different outfits for a single model, or 10+ images from each of 3 different shoots with a single model.

For Instagram, I have been told that Instagram is "where it's at" these days, and that I should be using it if I want to connect with people, and I can see why. Its a popular social media platform that many people use, and people who follow your profile are notified when you add new content and see it on their feed. This combined with the fact that it's THE platform that so many models use day-to-day, in fact rather makes me feel like any platform OTHER than Instagram would be less than ideal by virtue of not being Instagram. There's also no limit (that I'm aware of) to the number of images you can upload over time. The problem however is that although you can attach multiple images to a single post, which is nice, you can't add images to a post once it's been posted, and there's no other way of "organizing" your photos. Thus if I were using Instagram to host my widest breadth of photos, I would feel obligated to finish editing every photo of a given category (eg. a particular outfit from a particular shoot) that I plan on ever uploading before I post the ones I have finished; because if I wanted to go back and add more later, I would have to put them in a separate post, without being able to group them together in any way with the ones I've already uploaded. (This is what I meant above about how many I need to edit before I'm ready to make a proper upload.) I'd like to be able to have all/most of the photos of a given category in one place, regardless of how large that group might be, without having to upload them all simultaneously.

On Flickr, you can sort images into albums and I don't think there's a limit on the number of images you can upload. You can also control the sequence of your photos beyond the order in which they were uploaded, so photos can be organized even without creating folders-within-folders. The problem is that of these three, it strikes me as the platform where it's least likely that anybody would actually see what I post. My Model Mayhem profile is implicit when reaching out to models on Model Mayhem, and Instagram as discussed notifies people when you add content and is generally popular; but the only way people would see what I post on Flickr, for the most part, is by following a link to it from elsewhere, which is underwhelming compared to the other two.

Having pondered this, the best solution I can come up with is to use Flickr to host the bulk of my photos, organized into albums, and then get people to see it by posting on Instagram with a link to the album every time I create a new album, or make a significant addition to an existing album. My reason then for creating this thread is to check my thought process, see whether people agree with what I've said and my subsequent conclusion, and see whether there's something I'm missing. (Though even if there's some platform of note that I'm not aware of, I doubt it would solve the "everything that's not Instagram is ineffective because it's not Instagram" problem.)

Thanks a bunch, and sorry for the somewhat long post.