OK, so there is a lot of dross on Flickr, many photos are uploaded simply to show people something that occurred rather than for their artistic merit. I upload to Flickr because it's easy and easy to link from to forums and blogs. To me it's a hosting site that is (or was, easier to use than Picassa - although that has changed recently) rather than a sharing site. To be honest I have no interest in joining Flickr groups to get insincere praise, or geeky comments about technicalities that don't interest me, from people whose own photos show they have no concept of what photography can be.
But is the standard on 500px really that good? I don't think so. I think it is superficially impressive. It represents the hobbyist's values of what makes a good photograph. You see the same styles repeated time and again - the wide aperture 'bokeh' shots, the super-wideangle landscape with a rock in the foreground and a slow exposure to make the sea turn smooth, and numerous compositional and stylistic clichés. It's a plagiarists paradise.
But that's seems to be what hobbyists want. They are continually seeking 'good places to shoot near' certain towns. I assume in order that they can go and make photos that look like everyone else who has been there. And therein lies the fault with seeking inspiration from sites like 500px. The temptation to replicate what you see is great if you lack imagination.
Looking at contemporary images only shows you the current trends. Not all of these will stand the test of time. Fair enough if you are a commercial photographer who has to make saleable work, trends have to be followed, but for personal work it is much better to take heed of what has gone before rather than emulate what is going on now.
That is why artists still study works from many centuries past. At the very least you ought to skip a generation of artists or photographers. Look back 30 years or more. Often work that was overlooked at the time (it wasn't fashionable) becomes highly influential at a later date. Colour photography of the 1950s and early '60s being a case in point. Serious photographers shot black and white, colour was for snap-shooters. Thirty years on some of those colour photos came to be considered ground-breaking and highly influential. Or is this just another fashion trend?
My 'serious' photographs aren't slick enough to fit in at 500px (although that could be a good reason to sign up!), nor can I be bothered making pretentious statements about them in order to make them into 'art' (although I easily could). At least I don't have to sell them to put food on my plate, so I can carry on making them because I want to. Every now and then I'll make a photo that surprises me. Which is why I keep doing this photography thing.
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