Project
PhotoSight
Photo community · Social network
Gallery, rankings and contests. For photographers since 1999.
PhotoSight is one of the oldest photographer communities on the Russian-language web: a high-resolution gallery, daily and expert rankings, photo critiques, contests and photography services. We refreshed the interface in the site’s own style and strengthened what viewers never see: moderation, vote protection and infrastructure for 10,000 uploads a day.
Scale and technology
Duplicate detection across millions of photos, automated content checks and vote manipulation detection through connections between accounts.
The first screen belongs to one photo of the week, chosen by an invited curator — a professional photographer — rather than by a crowd vote. Below are the Photo of the Day contenders with a countdown, your vote and live counters of new photos and comments.
Photos sit in even rows without cropping, each with its title and author. Filter by period, camera, place and orientation, or switch between New, Best, Contenders and Curators’ picks. Labels show at a glance which frames became Photo of the Day or Photo.Image.
The frame takes up almost the whole screen, and the author’s other photos scroll by on the signature film strip. On the right: Artistic, Original and Technical scores, camera and lens from EXIF, tags and discussion. If the photo is a contender, you can vote for it right here.
Every day curators shortlist contenders from all categories and members pick the winner with three votes a day. Each photo shows its place, vote share and the time left. The winner takes the homepage for a day and stays in the archive for good.
The weekly top 50 and monthly top 200, with position changes and point trends. Votes are weighted by voters’ reputation, expert votes count more and suspicious ones are excluded. Authors of the week are listed alongside.
EXIF, GPS location and category are filled in automatically, so the author only needs to review them. While the file uploads, it is checked for uniqueness against millions of photos, for 18+ content and for quality. Nomination for Photo of the Day and copy protection are set here too.
Experts leave notes right on the frame and score it on composition, light, color, idea and editing. A rule-of-thirds grid, histogram and before/after view help explain each point. The author replies in the same thread.
A portfolio by category and album, Photo of the Day and Photo.Image awards, monthly views and gear. From the profile you can follow the author, send a message or book a shoot via Services.
A contest page shows the stages — entries, jury shortlist, public vote, winners — along with categories, prizes and jury. Submitting takes one click, and counters show how many authors have already joined.
A catalog of photographers with portfolio, rating and price, booking through a safe deal and made-to-order prints. A Pro subscription gives authors a services showcase and more uploads — the community gets a clear revenue model.
Most uploads are approved automatically; the rest go to the queue with a reason: possible 18+, duplicate, stock watermark or a report. A duplicate card shows the original side by side, the similarity score and signs of disguise. Clean photos are approved in bulk.
The vote graph exposes account farms and mutual-voting rings. Each cluster shows shared devices and subnets, sign-up times and hourly vote spikes. Rigged votes are voided before results are counted.
Hourly visitors and uploads, today’s categories, a photo’s path from upload to CDN and service health on one screen. It shows where a queue is building up and what was done about this week’s incidents.
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