About us

How Photographers on the Net was born

This forum would not exist without another forum: Photography on the Net, POTN for short.
POTN was created in 2001 by Pekka Saarinen, a brilliant and stubborn Fin. It ran for 22 years, until he unexpectedly shut it down on 1-1-2024.
I put together a team and we built a new forum so the community could stay together, just move to a new address.

Unfortunately disagreements about commitment and an unqualified moderator split the staff apart and it turned ugly.
It is a long and sordid story that I may one day tell in full.
All I want to say here is that the co-ownership we agreed upon turned out to not exist...

I decided to start a new forum, one that I could truly call my own: Focus on Photography.
The name was changed a year later to Photographers on the Net, an homage to POTN and Pekka, who sadly passed away in 2024.

A year ago I wrote: Maybe this forum won't go anywhere as I don't have the benefit of an existing community waiting in the wings.
I'm still trying though.

But here we are, one year later and we are doing well. This forum does have a future after all!

Levina de Ruijter, 12 January 2026