If you miss the days when Instagram was more about photos with friends and less about reels and insane growth, Foto might be for you.
Foto had been in beta for a long damn time, and I joined it early, although I confess I stopped using it for a long time because it was just too quiet and too lacking in features.
Well, it’s public now, and it’s evolved a bit since I last gave it a proper go. It’s still light on features, but it’s worth checking out.
Keep in mind, though: Foto is very much about photographers. When you log in, you’re going to see a lot of artistic work: portraits, street scenes, landscapes… so, in that respect, Foto isn’t like early Instagram. It’s not photos of you and friends with shitty filters applied; it’s for photographers, be they professionals or amateurs, hobbyists or complete newcomers.
I personally dislike that you’re stuck with the tags they’ve decided are appropriate, rather than being able to add hashtags. Maybe they’ll add this later, but in the meantime, if I want to search for posts that are tagged ‘Germany’ or simply include that word in the text, that’s tough shit for me.
So, check it out, but perhaps don’t expect much love for quicky selfies of drunk friends. You’ll find me at @mikestevens – although I think that link will only open if you have the app installed, as they currently have no web interface.
GALLERY
An alternative to the alternative?
I’m not sure yet if Foto is for me, but one Insta alt I’m enjoying is Pixelfed, which is part of the whole ‘decentralised’ movement that gave rise to Mastodon (both are built on the ActivityPub protocol), and the fresher BlueSky.
BlueSky has also become popular with photographers, although any photos you post there are going to appear alongside tweet-like text posts and memes and videos. (Check out this search page on BlueSky Directory for a list of user lists you can check out for photography.)
For those on BlueSky who want the photos and none of the rest, various devs are building their own photography-focused apps that run on top of BlueSky, basically allowing you to get photo-only posts in an interface that looks more like Instagram.
The most advanced option at the moment is Flashes, although it’s currently only in dev for iOS. The dev is planning to add Android later.
Another option for photos on BlueSky is Gridsky, which can be used in your web browser – and thus saved as an ‘app’ on desktop or mobile (although the latter function works best on Android). Gridsky is still in development, but I feel like its Instagram-lookalike interface has solid potential! What it really needs, though, is the ability to browse specific lists – so that I can make sure I’m only seeing posts with the #sonyalpha tag, or the #ricohgr tag, et cetera.
