No, I actually don't think it is. Yet so many good photographers bombard Facebook with photo after photo looking for a comfy hug, a pat on the back and hopefully a bunch of likes. Aren't we all worth such a lot more than that?  Surely there is a need to do more with our photography.

Because of my background in technology and especially in web creation and development, for me this issue is somewhat less of a problem. Over time I have created several ways to show off my photography that are all persistent, professional and which allow me to pander to my artisitc, commercial as well as photographic interests. Firstly I now use Flickr which I am finding more and more useful and valuable, more on this later, plus I have my blog - The Creative Camera - and Pixtures which, as you are reading this you'll know is an photo display platform. These all work beautifully and I am slowing growing my engagement through these mechanisms rather than waste all my time purely on adding yet more and more images on Facebook. I still use Facebook of course, modern websites offer frameworks which link to social medai platforms such as Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and Twitter making it easy to share images and content with these social media giants. The difference is that all of the images I now share are sitting on my platforms and I can share them as I wish. That's a huge difference.

Now, I mentioned Flickr. A lot of photographers I know don't use Flickr and I find that a little strange. Firstly, and probably most importantly, it's a community with the ability to share your photography as you want to see it shared. Unlike Facebook, Flickr actually allows you to choose what and how you share your images from Creative Commons right through to All Rights Reserved. That's not sometihng you can easily do on Facebook and it's certainly not a model used by many photo sharing or photo competition websites. Used by professionals and amateurs alike, Flickr just bursts with amazing photography so it's really easy to follow the work of any other photographer you take a shine too. Then there are groups you can join enabling you to chat and interact with any number of other photographers interested in what you are interested in. Finally, it's free for the vast majority of photographers and dirt cheap if you want the pro-service. With 1000 images to play with before you have to consider costs, even then it's only £4.99 / month, you can share a lot of great images for free. Best of all, Pixtures users are able to dynamically link their Flickr albums to their Pixtures profile and display as many albums they wish. In this way they can create a persistant platform for thier work, display it on social media and be part of the world's biggest photographic community. That surely can't be bad.

So, there you have it. My love affair with Facebook is slowly winding down. I won't stop dating her though, there's some mutual benefit in going out occasionally but I will be asking for my keys back!