Community

Sharing is personal. Some photos are for everyone. Some are for no one but you. And many sit somewhere in between — meant for a handful of people who deserve more than a link but less than a public post.

Today, we’re introducing Circles: a lightweight, human-first way to share photos with named groups of people you trust.

The Idea Behind Circles

Every photographer, from hobbyists to professionals, develops their own circles of trust. There are the friends who see works in progress, the clients who receive polished galleries, the peers whose feedback helps refine a project before it goes public. Until now, sharing within these small, recurring groups meant awkward workarounds — private messages, unlisted links, or duplicating uploads.

Photography has always been shaped by technology. Every generation of photographers has faced new tools, from faster film to digital sensors to computational imaging. Each advance changes what it means to make a picture — and how we understand the relationship between the tool, the maker, and the final image.

Today, generative AI sits at the frontier of that conversation. Its influence is expanding quickly, and with it comes a simple but important question: what does it mean for a community built around photography?

People come to Exposera to share and discover photography that moves them. Our Popular feed exists to highlight the photos our community is enjoying right now, but it’s built around a principle that runs counter to most large-scale social platforms: surface great work without playing attention-economy games.

This sounds simple, but it isn’t. Ranking systems are always value systems. The design of a feed determines which voices are elevated and which are buried. It defines what “success” looks like, and, in subtle ways, it shapes how people create. We designed our Popular feed with that awareness in mind: not as a mechanism to maximize engagement, but as a reflection of what a healthy photography community should look like when discovery is guided by appreciation instead of addiction.

At Exposera, we believe access control should be obvious, flexible, and never get in the way of sharing your work. Every photo has a story, and every photographer has their own sense of what “sharing” means. For some, it’s about public recognition; for others, it’s about quiet collaboration or private documentation. We wanted to support all of those patterns without turning privacy settings into an obstacle course.

So we designed a model that’s intentionally small and focused. Every photo or post can be set to one of three clear levels — Public, Unlisted, or Private — and each one behaves exactly as you’d expect.

Street photography has always occupied a complicated space — both literally and ethically. It thrives in the unpredictable theater of public life, where chance encounters and fleeting gestures become visual poetry. Yet beneath its spontaneity lies an enduring tension: the photographer’s right to document versus the subject’s right to privacy. This tension has existed for more than a century, shaped by shifting social norms, laws, and technologies. Today, as cameras have become ubiquitous and sharing instantaneous, that debate feels sharper than ever.