photofri.day

How It Works

The Mechanics

Follow. Tag and share your entries. See the entries from others. Show some love to the ones that inspire you. Watch your feed for the weekly results. All on your own feed and server.

The twist: your photo never leaves your site or instance. No uploads, no cropping, no compression, no silo. PHOTOFRI.DAY just points the world back to your work — the way it should be.

You'll need to be on the Fediverse — any compatible software, with a @user@instance handle of your own. (Don't worry, this is free. Learn more at fediverse.info.)
Join by following @[email protected].
Receive the prompt Friday morning, the week before it's due.
The prompt can be a word or a sentence — how you interpret it is up to you. What you submit is up to you too, with two caveats: no NSFW images, no nudity. This challenge is open to youth who don't need to be exposed to that. Please govern your submissions accordingly.
Submit your photos over the course of the week using that week's hashtag.
Maximum of five. Go over five and the system quietly drops your own earliest entries from vote counting — never anyone else's, just yours.
Once you submit, we boost it to our own feed — so everyone following @participate sees your image on their own feed. No need to visit us; that's the whole point of the Fediverse, it comes to you. They like and comment right there, and we tally the likes on those boosts; the ones with the most likes win 1st, 2nd, and 3rd for the week, and links to them are featured in the Hall of Fame.
The 1st-place photographer is asked to pick three honourable mentions from the non-winning entries by the following Thursday. Those get featured the Friday after — exposure for the people who didn't win — and go into the Honourable Mentions gallery. If 1st declines, we ask 2nd.
Want to participate but don't like being judged? Add the hashtag #horsconcours — French for “not in competition,” or “out of competition.” People can still like and comment on your image (we can't control that), but our software won't include entries tagged this way in the counting for rankings.
To leave the challenge, unfollow us.
To withdraw your work, delete it from your server, or just pull the hashtag. Our link gardening will notice and remove it — usually the next pass, but it can take a few weeks.
Like, comment, and most of all — please be kind. Not everyone's at the same place in their photographic journey, and people new to the craft need and deserve encouragement. Be the one who sees the best in someone's effort and lifts them up.
By participating in PHOTOFRI.DAY, you've helped grow the photographic community inside the Fediverse, connected photography lovers on disparate servers, and showcased some of the best images we have to offer to those outside the Fediverse. Thank you for helping build this corner of the Fediverse.