Every once and a while when I’m searching for sample photos shot with a particular SLR lens (e.g. Pentax smc P-FA 77mm f/1.8 Limited), I’ve found that PBase’s users’ photos, tagged with a given lens, tend to rank highly in Google.

PBase is one of those rare proto-Flickr, proto-social-networking, photo-sharing sites that still seems to be thriving. The founders live in Chapel Hill, which is interesting to me as I lived there for 7 years (during college). It definitely has that Designed By Engineers™ visual style. I love that about pbase links to a page named server_info which in turn links to a page with photos of their servers. Very geeky. You can definitely tell where their hearts are: photos and servers.

Anyway, it’s always astonishing to discover (and rediscover) these communities on the internet, apparently healthy and flourishing, yet operating below the mainstream radar.