500px has fine art photographers directly in their crosshairs. They encourage members to upload only their best work and the mission statement starts off with “Being an artist has never been easy…” In an interview with Michael Dziera, founder Oleg Gutsol had this to say:

I believe everybody is an artist. Everybody sees the world differently and that vision is unique. Everybody can pick up a camera and take a photo. Our site is for people interested in photography, people who want to share their artistic vision with the world.

Photographers are responding, because the quality of work showing up on the site is impressive. When I look at the fresh and upcoming photo lists, I see many interesting photos on every page.

If you’re browsing the web from work, be aware that artistic nudes are common on 500px.

500px only arrived at its current version within the past year. It’s been having success overseas as is evidenced by a large number of Russian and Eastern European members. Now it looks like they’re gaining traction in the U.S. with a lot of popular American Flickr members trying it out over the past few weeks.

The site might be called 500px but the photos are big! Thumbnails are 280×280 and shown 3 or 4 across. The detail page for each upload shows the image at 900 pixels on the longest side.

This is a page straight from the SmugMug playbook, and it’s a good one. Photos have a lot more impact when you see them big, and the uptrend in display sizes and average screen resolutions makes doing so much more feasible than it might have been a few years ago.

All the basic features such as photostreams, favorites, and comments are present. Members can add each others as contacts and see recent uploads from everyone in their list. “Popular” and “Editors’ Choice” sections highlight interesting work, and members can create portfolios with custom branding, hooked up to Google Analytics.

As with any site, the details will be need to be fine tuned over time as more people use the site and submit feedback. The team is on top of things though… I tweeted a suggestion for keyboard shortcuts and even though it was late on a Sunday night, staff responded within minutes.

I’m looking forward to seeing where 500px goes from here. If you decide to join the site, add me so I can check out your photos.

Write a post on a forum, blog or social networking site griping about customer service from Adorama Camera and the odds are pretty good that Adorama Customer Service Ambassador Helen Oster will show up to address the issue. I have observed this many times on message boards and in Flickr groups, and it really is quite amazing.

In this comment on Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection in response to the blogger’s post about difficulties getting a Canon 5D Mark II, Helen reveals that she has a presence on “something like 400 Internet forums, blogs, websites and photo-sharing sites“. 400 sites… that is quite amazing, and I would be curious to see what kind of workflow Helen uses to manage all of that information.

Brick & mortar business can learn a lot from Adorama’s proactive approach to online customer service. The Internet enables all sorts of conversations between people that would never have been possible outside the digital realm. Some see it as a threat and resist, but Adorama’s embrace of this new dimension added to customer service by the Internet as a way to care for and grow their customer base is very, very smart.

Photo by laffy4k used under a Creative Commons license.