004: Six Months On
Wow, I can't believe it's been six months already. I have some things to catch you up on.
So I started this newsletter in the hopes of giving myself some accountability to produce content more frequently, to get out and shoot more again. That sort of happened and sort of didn’t. In my last newsletter, I was musing on the idea of better platforms for photography, and that I was going to try and build one. I had made a bit of a start but it was still very bare bones.
Refrakt today
It’s still in private beta and I’ve been working on a bunch of different things, but I’m excited with where Refrakt is today. I thought I’d highlight the main bits, quickly rattle off some of the features so far, and then take a brief look at what I’m working on next. Maybe I’ll move all the Refrakt talk to a separate Refrakt newsletter as I appreciate it may not be for everyone, but I’d love if you indulged me for the time being.
Also Refrakt is still only being developed by myself, but I use “I” and “we” interchangeably. I haven’t figured out if I should just go all out on “we” yet.
Feeds
There’s two main modes on the Home feed right now. Both feeds are chronological, but one is for everyone on Refrakt, and one is just for the people you follow. This has a nice benefit in that you can browse the “Everyone” feed to find new work from across Refrakt, but you still have a more focused space to retreat back to. Since there’s not a lot of people on Refrakt right now, both feeds update at a manageable pace, but I imagine the “Everyone” feed will grow over time where the “Following” feed becomes more necessary. I’ve had an idea for a while now about more curated feeds, but I won’t share too much on that just yet. There’s also a Discover page which has some of my favourite posts.
Series
Series are something I’m excited about and I think they might have some potential. They’re basically a way to organise a bunch of posts around a specific topic, kind of like a mini zine or photo book. Right now, you can group up to 30 posts, and you can add and edit the series over time. They’re a little more involved than multi-photo posts on something like Instagram, but since everything is just a post, comments etc. can be related to the photo itself. It also means posts can be in multiple series at once.
I really like this way of organising work. Everything is a post, but you decide where it’s shared. Is it in a series or two? Should it only be in the series, or do you also want to publish it to the public feed? Once you start thinking of posts as individual units of media, you can do some cool stuff with them.
Series don’t feel super integrated right now. There’s a tab on the Home feeds where you can swap between posts and series, but they could be shown/used in more places around Refrakt.
Camera bag and film information
When you add a new photo to Refrakt, we automatically pull out any EXIF data from the photo. This works well for digital photos, but it doesn’t work that well for film. You can always add the metadata in manually in something like Lightroom, but maybe the software you use doesn’t let you do that.
On Refrakt you can edit what is shown when you post. You can change the camera, lens, add a film stock and the scanner you used. All this information is then linked to your post, so it will show up in film stock feeds, camera feeds etc. As Refrakt grows and more work is linked with film stocks for example, you’ll be able to browse a whole bunch of work shot on Portra 400. Or maybe you even follow the film stock directly 👀.
As with other parts of the post, this is totally editable after it’s been shared too. Accidentally set the wrong lens? Don’t worry, you can just go back and change it. We also save any new equipment we see to your camera bag so it’s faster to add next time. For example, you add a Mamiya 7 to your post. On the next post, your Mamiya 7 will be in the quick options when setting a camera model. It makes the whole process that bit faster.
A final bit about camera info is that you can add your own manual cameras, lenses, and film stocks. We’ve loaded in all the popular film stocks, but there’s so many cameras and lenses in the world, it would be too much to add them all up front. That’s why we let you add equipment manually. It just won’t show up in search until it’s been “approved” by us, a fair trade-off I think.
Props
This is a new release but it’s an extension of the “Like” button. I think likes are actually valuable as an indicator of whether your work resonated with someone. They’re just not great for the old brain. They light up the dopamine receptors which can be harmful since people chase the dopamine in an unhealthy way. Refrakt already circumvented this a little by hiding the likes outright, and only the author could see who actually liked their work.
I think there’s another issue with likes though, but it’s potentially solvable. A like on it’s own doesn’t give the author much feedback about why someone found their work interesting. With Props, you can set up ten short phrases to use in place of a traditional like, things like “Great composition”, or “Nice lighting”. Since they’re customisable, you can write them in your own tone of voice. They’re quick to add just like a “like”, but now it comes with more context for the post author. It’s still a one-way dialogue, but hopefully it’s more helpful and meaningful.
For now, they’ve replaced the “like” button completely. I’m going to be monitoring how they’re used and I’m open to feedback on what people think.
Quick fire updates
Pin up to 3 posts at the top of your profile. Easy.
The Studio lets you manage your posts on Refrakt. Right now it can only publish work to the feed, but it will be improved with bulk editing functionality like deleting, tagging, adding to series etc.
Public Roadmap page where you can make suggestions on new features and see what’s being worked on.
A basic About page (more jazz to come at some point) which should give a decent overview of Refrakt, why it exists, how you can help etc.
Better profile editing flow, you can now edit it directly from your profile instead of having to go to settings to add new links etc.
See who’s following you, and who you follow without sharing vanity metrics with others.
A whole load of other UI and performance improvements.
Private beta
I didn’t want to be in the beta phase for too long, but it’s not always easy to release stuff flat out. I’m just a one-person team, and I can’t work on it full-time right now.
Still, 175 people have access right now which is kind of crazy to me. I’d love if there were more folks, but it’s nice seeing it grow slowly. It was one of my intentions after all, a slower place to share work. It’s still not there in terms of completely opening up to the public as the moderation process is a little manual right now (for reported content). It hasn’t been an issue, but it’s always a concern when you give anyone on the internet the ability to upload what they want, especially as it would likely just be myself reviewing reports etc. That’s a problem for future Sam.
Upcoming
So the Roadmap mostly outlines what I’m focusing on, but I thought I’d add a little clarity to a couple of the things here.
Subscriptions
I’ve been working on subscriptions on and off for some time now. It’s a little more complex as a “platform”. I’m trying to strike the right balance between people owning their subscription data like Substack, and making something that’s still easy to use. I have a bunch of working code, it just needs more testing. I’m hoping to launch this fairly soon though. I’d like to test it while Refrakt is still small.
Collectives/Groups/Spaces
I still haven’t come up with a decent name for this but it’s something I’ve been thinking about forever, and I actually think this is where Refrakt will be most useful. The tagline for Refrakt is “A space to share, discuss, and discover inspiring photography”. Right now, the only place to discuss is in the comments on a post. That’s totally fine, but what if I want to talk more broadly about landscapes, or film, or birds, or anything?
The closest thing I’ve seen elsewhere is VSCO spaces or Flickr groups. I loved Flickr groups back in the day, but it was hard to find a good one without certain egos getting in the way. I love what VSCO is doing, I just wish there was a better desktop experience and a bit more of the discussion board vibe.
I think this is one of the bigger features of Refrakt and will take some time to get right, but the basic idea is to let people create these spaces, and invite others to join, or leave it open to the public. People can then share work to a more narrow feed, and join discussions. Ideally they would be around a certain topic like Landscapes, or around a community for example Desire Path. Someone also suggested having the option to make them private to solicit feedback between a small group which I love. Again, if posts are the atomic unit, it becomes very easy to make some posts private within a group, and then share the same post outside of that group when you’re ready without having to re-upload the work in a different area of the site.
General discovery
Right now there’s only the various feeds and the Discover page. I’d love to lean more into improving discovery with some Refrakt “official” categories and tags people can use, like “Black and White” or “Everyday”; custom feeds, think Twitter lists; curator functions, a bit like reposting content to a gallery of sorts; general search improvements; location feeds etc.
I’ll probably get to these things more piecemeal as I work on Collectives and Subscriptions.
Got ideas?
If you have some ideas for Refrakt, I’d love to hear them. If you’re already in the beta, you can just make a suggestion directly on the Roadmap, or if you want to share more privately, you can use the feedback form in the main menu.
If you’re not in the beta yet, you can sign up directly with the code “substack” below.
Want to support Refrakt?
I currently have a Patrons page set up on Refrakt directly. It’s a pay-what-you-like model with a minimum of $10. Becoming a Patron will get you a badge on your profile that also shows when commenting and giving props etc. You’ll show up at the top of search, and you’ll have access to new features a little before everyone else.
The Patron page explains a bit more about how and why I’m funding Refrakt, and any support means the world to me. There’s also a bit more info on the general About page if you fancy checking that out. That reminds me, I need to add the cost breakdown to the Patrons page, or just merge the two.
Anyway, If you want to become a Patron of Refrakt, use the button below.
Process
The main reason I started this newsletter! I appreciate it if you’re still here, I know it’s a lot to read. I’ll keep this short and just share some links to my recent work.
I’ve been out wandering the coast a bit more, so there’s a bunch of new images in my Coastlines series.
I also went to Scotland for my birthday, but I haven’t processed all the images yet, it’s a bit overwhelming haha.
Check out my profile on Refrakt for more recent stuff @sk.
Thanks for reading It was a long one but thank you.
For the next newsletter, I’ll probably talk less about Refrakt, and get back into my somewhat regular posting schedule. I think I’m going to just make a separate newsletter for all things Refrakt.
As always, I have no plans to monetise this newsletter, but if you found it useful in any way, then sharing with your friends would be amazing.
Thanks again, and have a lovely week!
Sam
Fascinating read, Sam. I am amazed by the amount of dedication and hard work you put into this wonderful project. I’ll give the Series a try soon.