I don’t know if this was an unforeseen consequence or not, but it suddenly struck me this morning, that making the image critiques only accessible to members may make it difficult to recruit new members. With many of us posting largely to the critiques with only occasional posts in the galleries, it is going to look to outsiders as if there is very little going on and to fellow photographers there isn’t going to be much incentive to join if they can’t see the critique portion of the site.
To me, that means that we, as members, need to promote the site with our fellow photographers and demonstrate the value of the site.
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Dennis, I understand your concerns regarding the promotion of new membership. As a new member I believe the relatively minimal cost for membership is a very small deterrent for someone to try join for a month, I believe the first month is free? If the very minimal cost is prohibitive I’m not sure the new member is very serious about the progression of their photography. I agree with your thoughts regarding promotion to fellow photographers. I have made it a point to promote the site at a recent workshop I attended.
If everything were available to everyone then there would be no incentive to join, me thinks.
The way that it’s set up is that non-members can see the posts in the critique forums as the title and thumbnail, but if they try to go to the topic they will be redirected to sign up. This way they can see that posts are happening regularly along with replies, but if they want to read more or participate they will have to sign up. The padlock next to the title shows that it is locked to that user, you can try it out in an incognito window. Along with this there is a 30 day free trial to kick the tires.
The promotion by all of the members is what’s going to really make this a success as you stated. A grassroots effort is the single best way to create sustainable growth and bring in exactly the type of members we want who are dedicated to learning and/or teaching.
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Thanks for your reply, David. Having those topics locked, unless one signs up for a free trial, is a good way to go, and also prevents spam posts, or worse.
In my opinion, the ‘sharing’ galleries will work best if members post a ‘final’ version of an image for which they received critiques. This does two things: The member’s work is more widely seen, and the public sees more images in order to promote NPN. I see this as win-win.
There are those who will say: ‘Well, it’s too much work for me to create an image to post in the sharing galleries after I’ve posted in the critique galleries.’ I don’t buy this. It’s not that difficult, and the reward is greater than the effort expended.
All of the members here ambassadors of nature photography and NPN. In a sense, we are all ‘owners’ and it is up to us to make NPN the best that it can be.
–P
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Thanks for the reply, David. I didn’t realize exactly how it worked for non-members. That seems like a good system.
Seems like a reasonable system to me. I do think we need to support the whole network though, and not just Avian and Landscape. Wildlife gets a few as well. Other galleries and critiques fare less well. Notably Flora and Macro. If we want to invite members, they need to see a buffet of choices, not just a popular two or three. This last week in Flora and Macro there was one photo in the image gallery of Flora, none in the Macro gallery. In the Macro/Flora critique combined gallery there were 6 postings, two of which were mine.
I have heard it said from a member that he has slowed down on posting in Flora because there is so little being posted either in critiques or images. That is true, but it is also a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I am going to practice what I preach and try to get around a little better. I split my time between Avian and Flora and a token drop-in to Macro. I would do more but we in the Low Country are handicapped with very few vistas other than marshes, no mountains and mostly private property. On the plus side, there are beaches, wildlife refuges and rivers. We also have 300 years of history, some of which could easily wind up in people, objects and places, or people and fauna.
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I agree whole-heartedly on the need to continue posting in the lesser frequented galleries, Phil. This whole site is a community effort. Rather than give up on those galleries, we should be encouraging more people, including myself, to participate. I’ll probably never post in People and Places, simply because I almost never photograph those things, but I have been sadly delinquent about posting in the Flora and Macro arena and I even have a few Wildlife images I should post.
I’m going to be computerless for the next week, but when I return I’ll start atoning for that neglect.
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