ShutterCritic

Shuttercritic is a photography critique site rather like the, now closed, photoSIG. The idea is that you upload photographs and other members tell you what they think of them. The critiques that you write or receive are supposed to be about the artistic and technical qualities of your pictures. Ideally the critiques should be more useful than the "Cute puppy" or Pretty sunset" comments that you might expect to get on sites like Flickr.

Shuttercritic is different to most photography sites because new uploads are displayed anonymously. The name of a photo's uploader is not displayed until the photo has been viewed at least ten times and the photo has at least two critiques. This is supposed to make the comments more honest and, generally, it works very well.

At the moment the site is free. All features are available to all users at no cost.

The site encourages members to make suggestions for improvements. You can make suggestions and vote for other people's suggestions. The site's administrators are helpful, friendly and eager to discuss any suggestions or comments about the site. A couple of my suggestions have already been implemented.

I joined the site three months ago when it had been running for about a month. At that time it didn't have a lot of members. It took about three days for my first photo to reach ten views and two critiques. I was quite happy with that.

Unfortunately the site has now run into problems. As time goes on it is taking longer and longer to get critiques. I recently removed an image from the site because after 12 days it had received no critiques at all. It is obvious from a quick look at members profiles that most members join the site, upload some photos, and then wait for someone else to do the hard work of writing the critiques.

The site rules have been changed recently in an attempt to get people to write more, and better, critiques but there is no sign of improvement. My last upload has been on the site for five days. It has one useful critique but has been viewed only five times. It seems that most members don't even bother to look at the photos, let alone write something about them.

Although it might sound as if the site is a waste of time, I think that it has a lot of potential if the people running it can get things moving again. I encourage you to have a look. If you do decide to join then please write your fair share of critiques. That's all the site needs to become great.