From: Steve Parrott (luxvivens@charter.net)
Date: Tue Jul 23 2002 - 21:08:56 MDT
.... a little heads up about Picture.com. It is not really a scam... but
close. Anyone who submits an even halfway decent photo will receive a very
professional looking notice in the mail with a copy of the photo on the
card. It will state how your photo has been selected for publishing in the
latest, big, beautiful, photo book of whatever name it is being called at
the time. You have to sign a release to have your copyrighted photo
published. Woo Hoo. Oh... you don't get *paid* anything for your photo...
but... if you want to order the book at a special pre-production price of
$65, now is your big chance. For only $25 more, you can include a short
description of the photo and / or yourself to include in the book. As you
may have guessed, I'm speaking from experience on this. I sent in a photo,
it was "accepted", I paid my money for a copy of the book, and waited. I
did this in the Spring of 2001. (I had sent in a macro shot of a
dandelion). The book, to be entitled "Nature's Palette, was to be published
in January of 2002. Well, I just received the book last month. There are
aprx. 1400 photos in the book... all quite small. Many of the photos I
would not even call decent snapshots. Somebody's Harley in the garage, LOTS
of stupid looking kids, poorly composed and lighted junk that has NOTHING to
do with *nature*. It is readily apparent that this outfit collects enough
money from the "photographers" to pay for publishing the book. Lets see...
1400 photos at $65 bucks apiece,.... $95,000 !!!!!!!! Yea... I think I
could publish a book for that. Bottom line... the people taking the photos
are paying an outside source to publish their photos in a book that the
"photographers" are rather unknowingly paying to have created when enough
money is collected by Picture.com... or whoever is behind the whole thing.
It is a reasonably nice book, though the pictures are rather small, about
wallet size, 6 to a page, over 200 pages. It is NOT worth it's price.
There are some decent enough shots in the book, though while looking through
it, it soon becomes obvious that LOTS of them are just filler to make some
money for the publishers. I have submitted 3 photos to the site, and have
received the same "congradulations... your photo has been selected" letter
for each of them... each one to be published in a different book. I fell
for it ONCE... not again. Wheather they actually give someone $10,000 for a
"winning" photo or not I don't know. I'm sure they can easily afford to
from the profits they make on this "business".
May I suggest instead that you visit a REAL photo contest site with some
serious photographers who create some real art. They have different self
assignments each month for you to enter a photo that relates to the selected
subject. If you win, you only get some free film, but at least it is on the
up and up.
www.vividlight.com
Sorry for the long post about this... but wanted to try to save some people
some money.
Steve
http://community.webshots.com/user/steven1626
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hermit" <hidden@lucifer.com>
To: <virus@lucifer.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 23, 2002 4:04 PM
Subject: Re:virus: photo details forgotten...
>
> ...here's some fun for you...a free online photo contest...10,000$ for
first
> prize, the other prizes are pretty tiny, but still some fun:)
>
> http://www.picture.com/contest/winlist.asp
>
> ...if virus lets me, here was my submission:
>
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