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I would like to know why some images get 3000+ likes on website like 500px. What are the parameters behind those likes?

  1. Composition
  2. Shot mode (M, A, S, P) etc.

I can understand subject and composition matters a lot, but does Mode also matters?

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    \$\begingroup\$ Who cares? Maybe the image owner has just too many friends and the likes are completely irrelevant to the quality of the picture. Did you think about that? \$\endgroup\$
    – kazanaki
    Jan 31, 2017 at 23:18
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    \$\begingroup\$ I believe it matters, Its a commercial website as well. People do purchase pics from there. \$\endgroup\$
    – Atul Agarawal
    Jan 31, 2017 at 23:24
  • \$\begingroup\$ Could you please expand on how the mode might matter? \$\endgroup\$
    – osullic
    Jan 31, 2017 at 23:32
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    \$\begingroup\$ @AtulAgarawal I don't follow. You can control exposure with exposure compensation in A or S modes for example. Why would manual mode shots be better? Unless you're saying in general that better photographers tend to use manual. In which case the better images are a result of better photographers, not manual mode itself. \$\endgroup\$
    – MikeW
    Feb 1, 2017 at 2:58
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    \$\begingroup\$ What makes a photo good and what makes a photo popular on a social media site such as 500pix aren't necessarily the same thing. \$\endgroup\$
    – Michael C
    Feb 1, 2017 at 6:26

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The parameters which matter:

  • The number of people that see the picture.
  • The number of people who think that photo is worth a like.

Whether or not an individual considers a photo worth a like is dependent on a lot of things:

  • the quality of the photo (and how important the viewer thinks that is)

  • the subject matter (and whether that interests the viewer)

  • the mood of the viewer

Very few objective properties of the image will be relevant.

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I'd argue that what makes a photo good isn't necessarily what makes it popular on a photo sharing site like 500px.

I'd consider most of the "top" content on 500px to be essentially viral content which could be popular for any number of reasons like humor, politics, special effects use, surprise, popular location, and so on - which may have nothing to do with if the image is good or not. In addition, the 500px site itself has algorithms that determine what content will reach each user on each page - again which may have more to do with the viral nature of an image and less to do with it's actual quality.

To directly answer your question, images are popular on 500px and similar sites based on the specific criteria that the site employs. For more information on 500px specifically see their help article on Pulse and Views.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Thanks for sharing Pulse and Views: 500px mentioned following comment " That's part of Pulse's secret sauce. Each vote is assigned a unique value, based on the voters' and the photographer's activity on 500px" I believe above factor is also one of the most important one. \$\endgroup\$
    – Atul Agarawal
    Feb 1, 2017 at 1:51
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    \$\begingroup\$ @AtulAgarawal - Yeah exactly, they aren't going to give away that secret so you can't game the system. \$\endgroup\$
    – dpollitt
    Feb 1, 2017 at 1:52

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