We have a new chatroom about Tumblr and Photography, check it out!
Here’s a project by Australian photographer Kisha Bari about the Hurricane Sandy and how it affected the lives of the residents of Rockaway. It’s a good reminder that photography is also about telling stories and keeping memories for futur generations as well as a way to teach us that humans are all the same in front of loss. View this project on Tumblr
Hi fellow followers and photographers, here’s a sneak peek of what we would like to achieve in term of “look” for the Lensblr website. No more rounded corners, bigger pictures, black backgrounds and a less intrusive menu (no more bold fonts in there). We’d love to hear your thoughts !
What do you think of the upcoming design changes ?
Howdy Folks,
Because we are receiving so many submissions lately, we will have to put more limits on the number of photos each person can submit. Currently, we allow 3 submissions in any 24 hour period, but in some cases this means we get 15-20 submissions from a single person in a week — honestly folks, that is just way too many.
So, we’re going to be instating the following new rules:
1. You can submit 2 photos in a 24-hour period,
2. But no more than 8 photos in a 7 day period.
3. Last, you may re-submit a photo after 25 days, if we don’t reblog it.
I think this is still more than adequate. And will perhaps encourage people to really submit only their Best work to us.
We’re also still monitoring posts tagged #lensblr and #photographers on tumblr as best we can, and we do include a lot of posts from new photographers we find that way, and from others who do not submit directly.
It’s getting hard though, with over 1200+ posts daily with those tags!
Have a great weekend everyone! Go out and shoot some photos :-)
⬢
Hello folks,
I’ve got a big backlog of messages and emails to answer from people, I’ll try to get through most of them today if I can.
One thing a lot of people ask is: ”I’ve submitted a lot of photos over the last weeks, but you haven’t reblogged any of them”
Honestly, it’s difficult for me to answer this, exactly why some photos are reblogged and not others.
The first thing everyone should understand is there are about 200-300 submissions daily, and we have to choose only about 40-ish photos to reblog, and that’s difficult in itself.
So, we have a team of volunteer editors who go through the photos submitted, and give each one an Up / Down vote. As head editors, we use this input to help us choose the photos we reblog. We take this as advice however; it’s not binding, and we don’t always choose the photos with the best reviews.
One thing we’ve always wanted is for Lensblr to be community oriented; that’s why we invite people to help us decide what photos to reblog. We built a special ‘staff’ website to facilitate this.
So, I guess my point is this -
Lensblr really is what all of you make it, both through the photos you submit, and through the help you give us reviewing those photos.
If you want to contribute as a volunteer reviewing photo submissions, then please let us know by sending us an email. (Please include your name & Tumblr in your email). You can contribute as much or as little time as you want. We try to be welcoming to all sorts of people.
Thanks,
Felix
Hello!
We’d like to put together a list of links or “resources” of other Tumblr blogs which primarily publish photo Submissions from tumblr photographers or which primarily reblog from original photographers on Tumblr.
Please help us out, and let us know about these tumblrs.
You can reply to this post, send us an email, use our ask box, send us fan mail. Also let us know what your experience has been with these tumblrs!
We’d love to build the largest list of such resources, so everyone is aware of the many different avenues available to share their photos with more people.
We will be collecting & posting links here: lensblr.com/resources (this page is being updated as people suggest more tumblrs - stay tuned).
Thanks!
?
We’re 11 months old today, this project is only a baby but it’s growing really fast lately… Next month we’ll celebrate our first year on Tumblr ! Let’s see how much we’re evolving in term of audience in 2013.
Twelve days ago we were reaching our 100’000th follower with an average of 850 visitors per day. Now we’re almost at twice that number, for both followers (190’000 already) and visitors per day (1500).
That’s an huge increase, in fact we gained more followers in that last 10 days than in our first 10 months. People that get rebloged by us will notice the difference, they will get a lot more exposure and notes to their posts.
I can’t wait for the next months, maybe we could even make it to the shorty awards (remember to vote) ! We also hope to *finally* launch some kind of contests but we’re still very busy in our lives to work on such a huge chunk of things to do. We’re also looking for sponsors for contests prizes so if anyone of you could help with that just email us :)
Thank you to everyone who were there since the beginning and thanks to all the new members and followers, contributors and visitors who write us nice little messages in our ask box. We always appreciate your feedback !
We wish you an amazing Sunday, don’t forget to go out and take pictures if it’s warm and shiny. If it’s cold and rainy you can always spend your day in bed editing your last week pictures on your laptop :)
Cheers,
- Sam
We posted this two months ago and since we now have a lot more followers (around 174’000) we’ll pass the message again. As always we’re tracking that special tag and rebloging pictures that we like. Thanks again for all the huge support, sincerely.
- Sam
Among the millions of blogs on Tumblr, only a small number are contributors of original content: “the world’s creators”
And if you’ve ever looked at Tumblr’s Explore Page you might notice that Photography is oddly absent.
There’s #design, #art, #architecture and even #artists on tumblr — but no mention of anything related to the art of taking pictures with a camera. Even #film is a trap — it’s for movies, not analog photography!
We don’t think this situation is acceptable. So let’s Fight it.
We’d like to ask all original photographers on Tumblr to start putting the #photographers on tumblr tag on every single photo you post.
Photographers deserve more recognition among the Creators on Tumblr. Hopefully, by using this tag we’ll help the entire community of Tumblr photographers get noticed — and maybe one day we will see that tag on the Tumblr Explore page too.
Reblog this post and spread the word.
Sincerely,
Photographers on Tumblr
Emiliano Granado, thank you sincerely for sharing these incredibly strong pictures with the world. Life is precious and your pictures too.
- Sam
If you haven’t already done it be sure to check out this project by one of our member and well known photograph on Tumblr, Bryce Evans.
I also encourage everyone to share their own projects on our Facebook page or to directly message us about them so we can share them (if they’re good) to everyone of our nearly 100’000 followers.
- Sam
Just a quick service announcement.
Samuel and I (Felix) have been super busy the last few days, and for the next few days this week.
So we’ve asked cpleblow to step in as Editor-in-Chief of Lensblr for the next few days. He’s been part of our volunteer staff for several months now. Actually, he’s already “stepped in” as of yesterday.
Basically, this means he will have final call on the posts we reblog for the next few days. So, if our selection of photos seems different than normal, you know why! And if you think he’s doing a better job at it — well let us know that too!
Thanks,
Sam & Felix
Well no, tagging is not futile.
First, watching the tagged posts helps us discover new photographers on tumblr all the time. And second, the tags aren’t just for us: others can use tags to find original photographers too.
That’s one of the reasons we made this post calling for original photographers to use the #photographers on tumblr tag (and de-emphasize #lensblr). In a short amount of time, we’ve found so many more talented photographers out there, and we’ve been reblogging their posts too.
The thing to realize is that even though we may not see every single post tagged with #lensblr or #photographers on tumblr, we still see a lot of them (I personally spend at least an hour a day going through these tagged posts). And it’s an important tool for us to discover more photographers on tumblr.
That’s an important part of our “mission” — just finding the photographers on tumblr. If we can’t find them first, we can’t let others know about them. Tags are great because it lets you find things globally on Tumblr.
I’d like to see more tumblrs that follow and reblog from these original photographers. Lensblr can’t do all of it! That’s the other reason we decided to emphasize “#photographers on tumblr” instead of the “#lensblr” tag.
It would be great to see more tumblrs that curated particular genres, styles, media etc from the photographers on tumblr. Lensblr is a potpourri, and we’ll stay that way. But others could curate the best analogue work, black and white work, iphoneography, landscapes, or whatever. And the Tags could be useful for them too, in finding people to follow and work to reblog.
There’s a couple I know of, but I haven’t been watching very closely TBH! (feel free to suggest some to us)
One of our members runs ycphotographs, more for art photography. It has a monthly theme and takes submissions. He also runs enjoysthesilence.
Another member runs colourfullifeforreblog, she mostly reblogs from other original photographers on Tumblr.
Another member runs culturewok, again mostly reblogging original photographers.
Just the other day, I saw someone started a new tumblr called original-photographers.
And of course there’s the Photographers Directory too.
I’m sure there are many more, and they’re all doing a great job!
So, as Lensblr continues to grow, there are more submissions etc, you should expect that other Tumblrs will be there too, with missions similar to our own.
We’re not alone, and we’re glad that we’re not.
—Felix
1. Submitting photos directly to our Submissions Page is the best way to go. We recently did some work updating this page, hopefully it is easier now to Submit your posts. (Hint: click the ‘Pick a Photo from my Tumblr’ button)
We handle about 200-250 submissions a day right now, and we reblog about 40. Your best bet is to submit 2 or 3 photos, then wait a few days, submit a few more.
I can’t make promises to anyone on what will get reblogged. We don’t do special favors for people because they ask us.
We have a big team of volunteers who Review all these submissions. It’s based on voting Up/Down on each photo. We (Samuel and Felix) use this input to help us narrow down which 40ish posts to reblog each day. It is not always a “majority rules” process.
2. Yes, we do also track the tags #lensblr and #photographers on tumblr to look for posts. We try to include many of them into the same list as the things “directly submitted” so they are reviewed by our staff in the same way.
However, we cannot include all of the posts tagged #lensblr in our list to consider anymore, because there are currently 500-600 posts tagged #lensblr every day. And over 1000+ posts tagged #photographers on tumblr every day.
It’s just way too many posts to go through, or to ask our staff to Review that many photos every day.
If anyone is interested in helping us with “screening” all of these Tagged photos, it would be a big help to us.
So, the bottom line is: if you want to be sure we see your photos, submit them directly.
I hope this helps clarify things for everybody.
—Felix
Hi everyone,
We’re answering some questions for an interview (secret stuff).
One of them is “Have you heard of anyone getting work or larger exposure after being highlighted on Lensblr?”.
What’s your story ? Did you gained another thing than just followers ? Friends ? New projects ? New ideas ?
Just a quick note -
I made several changes to our Photo Submission page.
Please let me know if you run into any problems or bugs with this update.
-Felix
Among the millions of blogs on Tumblr, only a small number are contributors of original content: “the world’s creators”
And if you’ve ever looked at Tumblr’s Explore Page you might notice that Photography is oddly absent.
There’s #design, #art, #architecture and even #artists on tumblr — but no mention of anything related to the art of taking pictures with a camera. Even #film is a trap — it’s for movies, not analog photography!
We don’t think this situation is acceptable. So let’s Fight it.
We’d like to ask all original photographers on Tumblr to start putting the #photographers on tumblr tag on every single photo you post.
Photographers deserve more recognition among the Creators on Tumblr. Hopefully, by using this tag we’ll help the entire community of Tumblr photographers get noticed — and maybe one day we will see that tag on the Tumblr Explore page too.
Reblog this post and spread the word.
Sincerely,
Photographers on Tumblr
LENSBLR
