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Hey there,

thank you for signing up with PortraitMode! Did you know? PortraitMode is developed mostly based on user feedback. We’re always curious to know how you think the platform can be improved.

👇 Share your feedback below

If you have any thoughts you would like to share, please do so in the comments section below. Thank you so much for your feedback! This will help us improve PortraitMode in the future.

87 Comments

  • Thank you for creating such a cool website! So far i can’t come up with interesting ideas but an app versionof PortraitMode, but if i have something in my mind i’ll let you know!
    And anyway, i wish you lots of luck in building this street photography community big and strong!:)

    Best regards,
    Maxim

  • Hello, I am liking this platform so far! I see that where applicable the system will automatically pull exif data from the picture file you upload. I think that’s a great feature, but I would like to be able to add or edit that information, especially because it looks like the search feature is partially to help people find photos shot with certain cameras. I don’t do my film scans myself, so they all have “EZ controller” as the camera in the exif, but I do actually know what cameras these were shot with, and sometimes I even remember to write down exposure information. I think it would be great if I had a field where I could put that information manually so that it could be searchable. Hope to see many more people embracing this website, seems really fun.

    Regards,
    Ted

    • Hey Ted,

      thank you for your feedback. That’s a great point! In fact, this is already on our roadmap (to some extent). We have planned to allow users to change the exif-data if it doesn’t exist, which is usually the case for film cameras.

      You brought up a good point though.

      Depending on the software the film is scanned with, a “Camera” is added. With Noritsu scanners it’s usually “EZ Controller” from what I’ve seen. We will extend that functionality to also allow users to change the Camera if it says “EZ Controller”. We will extend that list if we come across any other software that injects exif data.

      Thanks for bringing this to our attention! 🙌

      Best,
      David

  • I like what I’m seeing. I’ve missed a more photography focused social media where we can give and receive constructive criticism. I hope that portraitmode.io succeeds.

    One feature I would like, is to be able to quickly browse to the previous or next image when I’m in the Explore-page or when I’m browsing someones profile (either by swiping, by keyboard or by clicking with my mouse on the left/right side of the screen).

    And, as the first comment on here says, I would like an app so I can browse on my phone. It must have a quick and easy way of uploading images, just like the web version has.

    Keep up the good work!

      • And I noticed one more thing I would like: a more consistent way of seeing the images in larger mode. Now it is a bit hard to know how I get to see images pretty large, or when they’re just an “overlay” over the window I’m in and the images are a bit smaller 🙂

      • Hi David,

        I was going to add the same “left/right” suggestion and then I saw this feedback.
        Here in March 2023 just joined the group and the app but I don’t see that feature implemented.
        Any plan in the near future?
        It would definitely change the all experience.
        Also, could you add “edit/delete” comment buttons please?

        Thanks for the support.

  • Really happy this exists, but as with anything there is space for improvements.

    I would really like to see:
    – a phone app
    – dark mode !!!
    – the ability to send private, direct messages to other users
    – the ability to zoom in on photos
    – the ability to click on a person’s profile photo and see a larger version
    – who follows you
    – who likes your posts
    – once you click follow to follow an account, the button text should change to followed. As it is right now, it’s confusing, the color alone is not sufficiently telling of whether or not that you followed that account
    – when making albums selecting and adding multiple photos at once
    – the ability to like comments
    – when viewing a photo, clicking the author’s name should take you to their profile
    – when viewing a photo, clicking the location should show all photos, (perhaps from all artists, maybe) taken in the same location
    – when viewing a photo one should be able to move to the next and or previous photo in the album (with the arrow keys, ideally)

    That’s what I can think of right now, stuff I’ve been a little frustrated with.

  • First of all, it’s great to see a platform that focuses more on photography, I love what you have done so far and I really wish it grows more and more.

    Some of the things I’ve noticed is that:

    – When choosing images to submit, if the photo extension is in uppercase, it shows an error message: “Error: Invalid file extension. Allowed: jpg, jpeg, png.”
    – When you try to post an empty comment on a photo, the error page is displayed but the height size is too small (narrow) and a vertical scroll bar is displayed and you need to scroll down to show the ‘« Back’ link. Instead, it will be better to not take you away to an error window but to display an error message in the same way the ‘Invalid file extension’ is shown.
    – In iPad only, when looking at Profile/Featured/Explore list of photos, if you single-tap an specific photo it only displays the artist/location information, you need to tap it again to actually open up the photo.
    – In Android only (Responsive/Desktop mode), the notification’s bell is not displayed.

    So far, that’s what I’ve noticed.

    Great work!
    Arturo

  • Hi @davidvongries

    I first got to know you as the developer of Page Builder Framework WordPress theme. If you still remember, I once reported an issue about your theme on WordPress theme directory. After visiting your personal site, I found you also run PortraitMode.

    I am a photography hobbyist. I mostly share my shots to Unsplash, but ever since it got acquired by Getty Images, I am not too interested to share my photos to Unsplash anymore. So, I want to say thank you for creating such a great platform to share my shots. I really hope that PortraitMode will always be an independent platform.

  • Hi guys, and super thanks you for this initiative – the street photography world was missing a dedicated platform a lot!

    I echo Arturo’s observations – and face the same bugs (uploading .JPG/.jpg in particular).
    Can’t wait for an app release and all the best to the team!

  • I love how straight forward this is, so overall really happy with it!

    Only feedback are UX based, everything loads super fast so no complaints with whatever you’re using under the hood (and particularly since I noticed WordPress is at least being used for accounts!):
    – the masonry style grid is pretty janky, I think trying to emulate however Flickr does this re layout of differently shaped squares on a grid might be worth the effort? The scrolling experience is significantly affected because of this (at least for me. and sorry, I’ve sent this same feedback in an email but I think it’s worth repeating)
    – would be great if “Submit a Photo” remembered my last entered location
    – I might be missing something, but I can’t see who I’m following or who is following me. I’ve been searching artists by the first name that pops up to follow back

    Maybe opposite of what you’re asking, but something I hope you don’t implement:
    – don’t show how many likes a photo has. for obvious reasons but I can give you some if want them

    • Hey @michaelwheldon,

      thank you for your feedback!

      – Regarding the grid, that’s a known issue. It’s basically something we didn’t think of when adding this type of grid layout. It should definitely “reorder” further down, when things start to get janky. This is on the roadmap (with a rather low priority) as this will fix itself once the app is rolled out where we will only use a 1-column layout. It’s definitely something that needs to be addressed though.

      – Regarding not seeing who follows you, this is also on the list. It’s an important measure but just hasn’t been implemented yet. The same applies to showing you the like-counts & who liked your photos.

      Yep, we’ve built the platform on WordPress. This allowed us to build it much quicker. We are currently working on the underlying infrastructure to improve performance even more and make it more scalable. After that task is complete, it’s back to new features! 🙂

      Reference – https://portraitmode.io/status/

      • I think it’s awesome what you’ve built, really excited to see it grow 🙂 I’d be really interested in a post on the underlying tech at some point, it’s a really unique thing you’re doing.

  • Hi! I like PortaitMode very much! Great site and great artistic contents!

    A feature I missed a lot is the possibility to go directly from the notification to the Home page of people that liked my photos in order to see their portfolio. At the moment, the notification shows only his/her surname making almost impossible to identify who liked the photo using the search form in the Artists page. At least the complete name should be reported.

    Thanks for all the work!
    Ruben

  • Loving what I’m seeing here! I’ve had tonnes of fun exploring today.

    I know that individual comments would be a nightmare to moderate in the long term, but how about a policy encouraging more meaningful comments? ‘Fire’, ‘wow’ and ‘nice shot’ are best left on a certain social media I won’t name, haha. It would be nice to see the community that you’re building help each other improve instead of just leaving a little marker (single word comment for example) in the hope of a profile visit in return.

  • Hello!

    I really love the idea behind all of this and I hope it becomes a success. However, your number one concern right now should be getting that app into production.

    First of all, most people will not even give this a chance without an app.

    Secondly, without an app being there at their fingertips pushing notifications and calling for action/interaction, people will just slowly forget about PortraitMode.io even if they did somehow accept to sign up.

    With that said, I fully appreciate what you’re trying to build here. You have my support.

    Thanks!

    • Thank you for your kind words & your support, @christianloizeau!

      I hear you. The app is the most requested feature since we’ve launched the platform and I totally understand it. Though, we had to get the website and underlying infrastructure right before switching to the app as it will be directly linked to it. It’s been a tough but super fun ride so far and we’re now investing all our resources into the mobile app.

      Don’t quote me on this but the app should be ready in 2-3 months 🙂

  • Hi David, I really like having PortraitMode, the photo-sharing experience has been clean and clear, I absolutely hope this platform can be seen more and more by the photography community, however, the experience definitely can be improved by a few more developments.
    1. Like mentioned in other comments, having an app would be great. Take as long as you need to develop it, make it a paid download if you have to, just don’t sell it to Mark Zuckerberg;
    2. My name, and some other non-English names consist of 2 letters, which the platform considers as “too short” during sign-up, it would be great if shorter names can be accepted;
    3. Maybe this is my user error, but I can only edit the focal length in the photo info, I can’t seem to update the camera model and settings.

    Thank you for the development and best wishes to the new community!

  • Hey @louis_yu_ko,

    Thank you for your kind words. We will change the min. required character count to 2 with the next update & add SP-2000 (which is the scannner name) to the camera models that can be changed by the user.

    Currently how this works is: Camera models can’t be changed as they’re fetched automatically from the EXIF data. If empty, the camera model can be added by the user. If a scanner is inserted as the camera model, such as SP-2000 or SP-3000, we will have to add that to our list for “camera models” which can be changed through user action. We will add SP-2000 to that list with the next release 🙂

    Thanks for reporting!

  • Hey; I love the concept!

    As a lot of people are saying, having a mobile app would be very useful,
    I understand why you don’t want algorithm but I think it lacks a bit of “navigation”, maybe adding tags to sort photos would be great, not hashtags but some categories like portrait, landscape, automotive, animals, abstract… which could be found in the explore tab, (also maybe a darkmode would be nice)
    hope I described it well, keep up the great work !

    edit – I don’t know how this could be improved but I also feel like when you post a photo it can quickly get lost in the explore tab and it feels like they don’t have a long life time

    edit part 2 🙂 – also being able to click on the camera, lens, ISO, aperture or shutter speed would show all the photos taken with the same gear/setting

      • Yeah, my thought process is if someone primarily shoots in b/w but also does colour, they might want only the b/w to appear as the first impression on their profile.

        One point in regards to EXIF data. Would be nice for portrait mode to use the 35mm equivalent focal length instead of the crop sensor focal length. This equivalent focal length should be in the EXIF data.

        Lastly, my archive still shows photos from other members. I try to remove these images from the archive but the same images are still there.

  • Just came here from one of your latest released videos in youtube and loving this website so far. I was mostly thinking of making a dedicated app for this. It would be wonderful. Also I think mobile photographs should be categorized if they are allowed… I actually don’t know how mobile photographs work here but I think different categories could be made for them. So far, this platform is awesome for photographers but I think it should be expanded more outside of just street photography. Lastly, uploading multiple photos at once should be implemented and it’s very time consuming to upload one and wait for the next one and so on.

  • In first place congratulations for this great website. Definitely is needed for streetphographers. I will recommend to all my friends for sure.
    For me the only thing I would like to have it will be an App. Those days mobile phones and iPads are the most used devices and portrademode will explode in audience in there’s an App. Thanks

  • Hi,

    I like it so far, I am posting my street shots here as well. Bit interesting that photos don’t have title, but have a description – as usually I can’t be bothered to come up with the minimum of 5 words for the description, so I just post the photo and the location.

    I like that the thumbnails show the shooting info like shutter speed and aperture. One suggestion – as angle of view is more important when shooting street, it would be nice to show the effective focal length as well (like for ex. for my Ricoh GR IIIx it shows as 26mm – which is true, but the more useful measure is the field of view – which is 40mm equivalent). But okay, I admit this is more like a nit picking than anything else.

    As for having the app – yes – you’ll need relatively simple native (iOS/Android) apps that just embed the specific webview components (WKWebView & WebView respectively) and just load & display the website as it is + ability to upload photos – not much more needed I would guess.

    I just started using the platform for only a couple of days – and looking forward to linking up / interacting fellow street photographers. Hope the platform will grow and wish you all the best !!

  • One annoyance that I’ve felt is having to click on a photo, then click on “like”.
    It would be a lot nicer to incorporate a “heart” icon in the overlay of the photo. This would make it easier to “like” photos as you scroll through the explore page.

  • I really like the platform. Especially that it is not about likes, but about sharing. I hope this will not change, cause on my opinion it is its best feature.

    I wish there was a better viewing mode for the photos. It is kind of unfortunate that on PC and Mac you have to scroll up and down to view a portrait picture. I wish I could see the whole photo at once. Moreover, it would have been great if there was a full screen view for each photo.

    Also, when in an artist’s page could be better if there was a next button of sorts so I don’t have to always exit and load the next picture. Now it is a bit annoying and fiddly, while I would like to immerse myself in the style of the artist.

    Great platform though! I love its purism!

  • Hi David, I’m new to the platform, my English is very weak and I wondered if a translator for both the web and Discord wouldn’t be possible (many translators ask for Discord permissions so it would be better if it’s possible to unify just one translator so that we can all be in contact within discord), many friends from Spain and other countries would be delighted to be on this serious platform dedicated to true photography. A big hug and thanks for this great project for photographers.

  • Hi there,
    Great platform, I waited for this to share my street photography.
    Now … I uploaded 8 photos, but near my name it is stated that there are 4 photos. Once you click further, the 8 photos are displayed. A small detail on a very handsome platform.
    Keep it going and thanks for being there.
    Jos

  • Just when I was tired of Instagram and Flickr and not liking Vero, I saw the site mentionned in one of Eyexplore’s videos. I’m really liking the clean design and how things work here, it really feels like a breath of fresh air.

    I really enjoy watching and discovering other’s work as I really feel they care about it more than the social-media-likes-craze we see everywhere.

    If I had to find something, maybe about the uploading of images. It could be useful to have the filename displayed for confirmation, and maybe some kind of uploading animation.
    It might just be me but I had to look at the ‘busy’ animation on the tab of my browser to confirm the upload was processing. An old school/90s progress bar could be a fun touch.

      • Sometimes it’s user error – for example if the description is too short, it’ll just delete it anyway. It’ll do it if the image is outside of the allowable dimensions – but obviously you only find out after you’ve clicked submit. Finally, it just did it for no apparent reason “an error has occurred.”

        I think also there needs to be some tailoring for film photography, everything seems very geared towards digital – pulling out the camera and exif info for example, yet I can’t see a simple way to add the same data for a film scan. It’d be nice also if this data could be added at upload time.

  • It’s only been a few days here for me but I like what I see. I have received a few likes on some of my images. I get notifications of these likes but when I go to an image, there is no summary of likes nor who made them.
    There might also be an easy way to contact/communicate with the admins of this site. I had to figure out at the very bottom of this site and use the contact feature. But ti was not obvious to me until I discovered the links at the bottom of the page.

  • Thanks for the opportunity to share feedback. I read through some of them above.

    I agree with some of the comments above that it would be good to NOT have the function of seeing how many people have liked other people’s photos. Then this platform might become competitive (like other photo platforms), and I can see myself comparing myself with others and measuring my “success” through the number of likes.

    However, if it’s just for my own photo, it would be nice to see who has liked my photos or commented on them. Only the artist himself/herself would be able to see who has liked his/her photo, not other people. That would help us connect with other artists who have liked our photos.

    Hope this makes sense.. Thanks!

  • I joined and became a superbacker few days ago because I love the idea and really want this site/community to succeed. The quality of the work is superb and I am excited to be a part of this. Yes, there are some UX issues and most of them have been voiced above. Left/right arrow key navigation support in users’ gallery and explore page, more information on likes/followers, and proper photo scaling are high up on my wish list, but the one that tops them all is photo submission. Please, please fix the uploader and make submission process flow smoother. Single picture uploads and the other issues such as Alex Davidson raised above are killing me. Thank you.

    • Thank you for your support, @retropixer!

      I hear you. Uploading larger images can take quite a while and there are cases the upload fails altogether. We plan to rework the entire upload process, making it possible to also post photos from every page of the website.

      We will get to it after the Android version of the app has been released.

  • Really love what you are doing here. Something that might be valuable, that other sites lack, is meaningful interaction. Perhaps a function that allows followers to critique your work. By limiting it to just followers, it would reduce the amount of nonsense comments, as I assume followers are interested in what you are doing. It could even be something that a user can “turn on” for a particular photo, when critique is wanted, and it could have a separate comment stream just for the feedback.
    Something else that might be cool, is a way to see if anyone on this site is associated with one another. Like a field in their profile to let a viewer know if they are part of a collective or something.
    Again, love what is being done here, as others have said this is exactly the type of effort/community needed. Lots of potential. Would hate to see it become a mirror of other photo sites.

  • Hi, it would provide a better user experience if I could click on a profile and then click through all of their work, one image after the other. Presently I have to keep clicking their profile and scrolling through each time I want to see further images.

    Hope this is useful to you.;

  • I support you, I support you, this will be the first step to a bigger gathering of real photographers

    one focus for all

    login account using iphone
    I hope that in the future it will support iOS devices, Thanks PortraitMode

  • I totally get the vibe of just street photography but what if there was a space for all other kinds. That way if you want to mix it up a bit you can go to a separate tab that lets you post and view any photography really.

  • Hi PortraitMode team,
    I like your web site very much, because here you have the real professional enthusiasm. All the photos I saw so far are quite good. But as a newbie on this platform I could not find any navigation., eg what kind of categories are available, and are there subgroups, and is it possible to create a new topic group? A good navigation on this platform would be nice.
    Thanks a lot for the opportunity here. I am on facebook and instagram, but this here is the real deal.

  • Hi David, this is a superb site for photography lovers and I am still exploring the site. As for moving the site further I suggest having a search “engine” by camera models, so for example if in the future I am interest to buy a new camera, I can easily find images sample from the “camera search engine”.

    Thank you!

  • Ich glaube ich habe hier einen Platz gefunden. Die Plattform animiert sehr schön dazu, neues Auszuprobieren.
    Dass aktuell nur Street Fotografie erwünscht ist finde ich etwas schade. Ein paar sehr schöne Bilder Liegen noch bei mir die ich eigentlich gerne zeigen würde.
    Gibt es schon Pläne hier eine Lösung zu finden die das aktuelle Klima nicht bedroht sondern sinnvoll erweitern kann?

    Welche wunderbaren Bilder ich in der Kurzen Zeit hier schon sehen konnte war schon eine Freude. Die Posts werden gesehen und wertgeschätzt. Toll gemacht!

    Was ich mir wünschen würde, wären (private) Sammlungen mit geliketen Bildern. Aktuell Finde ich die Bilder wieder, da ich den Profilen meist gleich folge aber wenn es doch mal etwas mehr wird, wäre es schade so tolle Werke in ein paar Monaten/Jahren nicht mehr wieder zu finden.

    Gibt es aktuell eine Möglichkeit neue Kategorien vorzuschlagen?

    Bis her habt ihr eine ganz tolle Plattform schaffen können und ich freu mich schon auf dass, was da noch kommen mag!

  • So far I’m having quite good impressions from this service, thank you, David.
    I’d still love to have a possibility to ignore/ban users. Some of them just don’t follow the rules of the service, posting irrelevant photos, and I just don’t want all them in my ‘feed’. You can, of course, say “it’s your problem, deal with it”, but still option for filtering content would be a very useful feature for any social service.

    I don’t post from the app so I don’t care much about its features, Web interface matters more to me.

  • Hi Like the site so far, 2 things :

    1.when I am on a main page of another artist I would like to click on a little heart to like the picture and stay on the home page.

    2. to developp the community and better communicate with other artists, a messaginf control center woud be nice where I can the peopleI follow or follow me a msg them (like other platform I wont know)

    keep up the good work !

  • Hi David. I wanted to submit one suggestion.

    When I’m using the Android app, I find the “Magnifying Glass” icon to be the easiest and fastest way to see all the recent photos that have been posted.

    But when I click on a photo to enlarge it, there is no way to see the name of the artist. I can like it, and I can suggest for it to be featured, but I can’t see who posted the photo. I have to return to the “Home” icon and scroll down until I see that photo to see the name of the artist.

    It would be great if the name of the artist can be shown, when I click into a photo.

    Thank you!

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