I can warmly recommend Pixelfed, it would be great to get some talented photographers on board.

However, it's more like Instagram and not really suited for uploading a high-quality high-resolution portfolio. It's also not really suited for finding photos for a project.

Yes, that is true, although it all depends on what content people update, and how well they tag their photos.

I can easily imagine a pixelfed instance dedicated to sharing high-quality stock photos, with strict rules about photo quality, and how to post and tag the photos.

If only the server wasn't as demanding, it's a beautiful project and there are plenty of clients that experience-wise are similar to Instagram