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 - fotocommunity User Twins MD
A picture, so the saying goes, is worth more than a thousand words. Often, however, a few guiding words about a photo are indeed helpful. This is particularly true for amateur photographers. Who can you ask to help when your photos aren’t turning out the way you envisioned? Who do you turn to when your family and friends have had enough of your photos? Where can you find new models and project ideas? Who will join you on a photo-shooting tour or meet you to talk shop over a beer? And who can help you when you encounter problems with Photoshop? For the last five years, the answers to these questions and many more can be found at one place: fotocommunity – an internet community of around 700,000 photo enthusiasts. Amateurs, professionals and artists all come together at www.fotocommunity.de, Europe’s largest platform for amateur photography. fotocommunity is one of the most important venues for firms targeting their online advertising to the German-speaking photography community. fotocommunity is on the path to world wide success. The international fotocommunity.com in English has been online since 2004. And it has enjoyed ever-increasing popularity much as its counterpart in Italian, fotocommunity.it, which had its online debut in 2006. The French and Spanish fotocommunities were launched at photokina 2006, the world’s largest photography trade-fair.
 - fotocommunity User Georg Baginski
The employees at fotocommunity work together behind the scenes to ensure that procedures run smoothly while members seek out what is most important to them: communication with other fotocommunity members. Users have the chance to partake as the fotocommunity develops. Experienced employees take great care to ensure that your wishes are executed quickly and without any bureaucratic red tape. This works although the user community has since grown to what seem unmanageable proportions. Just like in a big city, where neighbors, clubs and circles of friends help one to manage routines and carve out a comfortable niche, the fotocommunity user creates a circle of friends and like-minded individuals. User comments, photo postcards, chats, chat-rooms as well as the user-profiles coupled with photos all help to achieve this goal. The polished appointment planner for photo workshops and other activities make it possible to build upon internet interactions in real life. Andreas Meyer (35), founder and manager of fotocommunity: “The fotocommunity creates first and foremost community spirit among like-minded individuals. We offer photography enthusiasts the possibility to present their works to a broader audience, to participate in discussions and to open themselves up to criticism. At the same time, we face the criticism of our members who motivate us to avoid complacency and to strive to be even better.”
 - fotocommunity User Gabriela Michler
In contrast to members with free accounts, paying members enjoy quite a few benefits – the most important of which is - in reality - not the popular Nude channel. Those who support fotocommunity with the current 3.50 Euro/month fee receive a photo enhancement package with more functions than the free version to make your photos look even better. You are allowed 10 photo-uploads per week and, in addition, you can have up to 300 photos posted in the community. For the most comprehensive subscription – the “Universe” membership – users pay a monthly fee of 11.50 Euro.
 - fotocommunity User Sonnen. kind I
The vast majority of members, however, pay nothing: checking out and commenting on other members’ photos, participating in discussions and up-loading one photo per week is free at fotocommunity. Andreas Meyer: “The openness of our platform is particularly important. The members with free accounts make an important contribution with their comments, their discussion inputs and their photos. Even the many unregistered users who click on just to view and read, but cannot contribute photos or comments, are part of the community. They tell others what they have seen at the fotocommunity.
 - fotocommunity User Gerd W.
fotocommunity connects. Not only the users with one another – it also aligns the interests of the leading German photography magazines and photographers with those of the fotocommunity: with photo series and jointly organized competitions. In this manner, photography magazines obtain high quality pictures with considerably less effort then organizing a competition themselves. The photographer basks in the joy of publishing in a renowned specialty magazine and the fotocommunity – as the developing platform - gains the recognition of magazine buyers.
 - fotocommunity User Stefanie d. B.
Since 2003, fotocommunity members have access with the arrival of fotocommunity prints to an online photo lab with color management. You just can’t take this for granted: fotocommunity prints’ photo lab works with the incoming color profile and processes the data in exact accordance with our customers’ guidelines. In addition, customers can choose among various formats and top-quality paper – via CD-ROM or online, you can test for yourself how easy and fast it is to order prints of your photos. ***Payments can be made hassle-free with credit card or bank transfer.***
 - fotocommunity User Notorischer Pflanzenfresser
At fotocommunity, we don’t just talk about current trends like the revival of classic black and white photography processed in your own lab or trash photography – here these trends come alive. Moreover, you will find committed artists with truly unique visual expressions at fotocommunity. For example, an architect and former art professor from the Netherlands creates pictures by compiling as many as 10,000 single photos. Or another photographer who thrills his fans and provokes his critics with his digital nude photo montage. Precisely because of this diversity, fotocommunity always seems new and is always full of surprises even to the veteran users. Travel and sport-photographers find like-minded individuals just as do nine-to-fivers who in their free time photograph flowers and insects or fanatics who experiment with their pinhole cameras. Each user can decide: you can stay in your group or you can experience a whole new world.
In 1991, Meyer founded his first firm with a school friend. Together, they produced diskettes, CD-ROMS, and an advertising game for the EU – these were the media of the time. The internet boom was yet unimaginable. In 1997, with international venture capital, he began developing software for distributing media. In 2000, he quit and took a year long sabbatical. In this year, he traveled and took photos. When he returned to Bonn, he set up a photo homepage and noticed: the rewards just didn’t measure up to the effort with such a project – few hits, little resonance. What would happen, however, when all such private projects could be linked with one interface, when they were brought together, networked? And fotocommunity was born.
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