Photographer banned from 500px because 500px don’t know what light painting is
Jan 22, 2019
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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Light painting photographer Tim Gamble is known for mind-blowing, surreal photos. However, despite his work being created entirely or almost entirely in-camera, 500px recently deleted his account for “posting non-photographic content.” It was done without any prior warning, without the possibility of recovering his account. We chatted with Tim to learn what happened, and he shared some details about the whole situation with DIYP.
Tim discovered that his 500px account was closed while he was filling in his profile for a project he’s currently working on. As he added links to his social media pages, he checked the 500px link to make sure it was pointing people in the right direction. To his surprise, the link said: “This page no longer exists.” After checking the app, Tim realized that his account had been deleted without warning.
After discovering this, Tim emailed 500px to find out what happened. He tells DIYP that he got a response last night implying that someone had reported him for “posting non-photographic content.” Consequently, his account had been deleted and would not be reinstated.
Tim emailed 500px again, outlining what type of photography he crates. He explained that 99% of his feed consisted of images created with a single long exposure. There was one image which was created in Photoshop from two photos, creating a digital double exposure. However, Tim believes that this isn’t the photo that got flagged. Despite explaining his work to 500px, he received no reply from them, not his account was reinstated.
“The headshot I believe was my last upload there and the hand one might be misconstrued as a graphic illustration to the untrained eye. Both are single long exposure shots with minimal Lightroom edits and no layering or compositing.”
“I can understand that my stuff could be misinterpreted as graphic illustrations and that someone who thought as such might complain,” Tim tells DIYP. “I’m just a little annoyed they deleted me without warning and clearly without reading the EXIF attached to all my shots.”
We have featured one of Tim’s images before, and personally, this is when I started following his work. I find his photos amazing, and it’s especially impressive that almost all of them were created in-camera as a single long exposure.
Just like Tim, I can also understand why someone could misconstrue his images as graphic illustrations. However, I don’t understand why 500px moderators didn’t even bother to check the EXIF data attached to his images. It’s disgraceful that they didn’t send a warning before closing his account without the chance of restoring it.
You cannot follow Tim on 500px any longer, apparently. But fortunately, his awesome work is shared on Instagram, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and his light painting blog, so go and check those out.
UPDATE: after Tim’s story reached the public, 500px restored his account after all.
Dunja Đuđić
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, concerts, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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25 responses to “Photographer banned from 500px because 500px don’t know what light painting is”
I guess this is a sort of admiration of his work.
Sad news :(
Fucking hell, 500px is really digging its own grave deeper and deeper.
That’s a little extreme. Surely a warning should have been given or state that [image title here] has not been published/removed because [reason].
Not an outright ban without the chance of reactivating it.
Hey I’m on 500px, I do many types of photography including lightpainting, I haven’t got any messages. Many people think my stuff is photoshop or something as well. Oh every lightpainting photographer on 500px should post a lightpainting right now, I just did to show solidarity.
500px “don’t know” what light painting is…
Chris Goutis nope. 500px is a thing. It’s an it. It “doesn’t know.” But whatever.
Jeff Hayward 500pix is more than one people, thus we use plural with it.
Chris Goutis that’s not how English works.
Try “Facebook don’t know” in your head.
So absurd to remove his profile without any warning or explanation!
Shame on 500px for making a stupid decision and for the dismal handling by their customer service people
I left 500px when they ditched maps without any warning or reason. I made several attempts at contacting them about this and they just blew me off.
Hmm… the “Getty of China” seems to be all that it’s cracked up to be.
That tells me Light painters are light years ahead of time ?
500px is rubbish service ever ??
The staff at 500px needs to be schooled in light painting
500px was about to feel the full wrath of the Interwebs and came to their senses. But still, they me be ra tard.
His account is back, thanks to the articles on the web :P (maybe an update for the article to say so ?)
It does…
“UPDATE: after Tim’s story reached the public, 500px restored his account after all.”
And they added it after my comment, obviously… -.-
Suuuuuuuure
After all this, I don’t know why anyone would want to use 500px, much less Tim after they reinstated his account. I’d close it myself just out of principle.
When I read the title I assumed this was a satirical article. Boy, was I wrong!
Fuck 500px its shit compared to Flickr and all the lightpainting heroes are posting on there and Facebook anyway …. How about we all go back to Flickr where we used to be happy…
Long live lightpainting and poopoo to anyone who edits it ?