In my humble opinion, Flickr was in need of a change. It was creaking at the seams, getting ever slower and frequently misbehaving. To be honest, I had also gone stale, posting less and less and just going through the motions.

So, Flickr, or more correctly Yahoo, made sweeping changes. Unfortunately, when it was released, it was full of bugs, ran even slower, looked awful and denied photographers any choice as to how their images were displayed.

True, there was far more space available for higher resolution images but in these days of widespread image theft no serious photographer is going to post high resolution images for others to steal; something Flickr never seemed to want to prevent.

Bugs were fixed, albeit slowly, but the dissatisfaction of the majority of members was largely ignored. After seven years with Flickr I felt let down and decided not to post any new images there.

Like many others, I decided to look elsewhere. I came to Ipernity and found a site where the owner of images had freedom of choice as to how their images were displayed. Where invite and award icons were discouraged so personal comments were the order of the day. As a consequence it was far friendlier. Of course it was smaller. No longer would I get 40 comments a day, but every comment was now personal and that meant more than a few icons copied and pasted.

I feel rejuvenated. Now I'm posting far more images than I was on Flickr. I look forward to reading comments on my work and seeing other people's work; to making new friends as well seeing old friends on Ipernity. I look forward to seeing new friends' work and gaining inspiration from them. Inspiration is something we all need.

Yes, I miss the ability of having statistics but in truth that was only ego food. So today I have decided that Ipernity is for me. I have cancelled my pro subscription with Flickr and committed to Ipernity for at least the next year. My new images are now posted to Ipernity and not Flickr. I keep a free account at Flickr to keep contact with friends there who have not transferred to Ipernity but will not be posting any new images there.

Ipernity is definitely my site of choice.