A new platform called ARS offers photographers a way to get honest feedback on their images. Unlike social media, where commenters may be biased by a desire to be nice or get followers, ARS offers no such pressure or incentives. Instead, the photographers sharing images and the people critiquing them are completely anonymous.
ARS was created by Eric Kim, who explained on his website, “Whenever you upload a photograph to Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, etc – most people (to not hurt your feelings) will just say something generic like, ‘Nice shot! […] If someone saw my picture (and didn’t know who I was), would they still like the picture?”
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ARS ditches the social media model, instead presenting users with “equally and randomly” distributed images to critique. The platform features a simple, clean interface in which users have a text field for providing their feedback, as well as “Keep” and “Ditch” buttons. Photographers can view their “Keep” percentage for each uploaded image, as well as the number of critiques provided.
The platform was launched as a beta that has since been updated to version 2. According to Kim, ARS Beta 2 is about 300% faster than the original version. Additional work is underway to eventually launch version 3, as well as an ARS mobile app. Interested photographers can join at ARSBeta.com using a Google account.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)