Only VIP Members Can Put Out A 'Wanting To Get Paid' Casting Call...Is This True?

I doubt many people join PP for the forums. Reddit would be much more rewarding.

True MissKW .M., but photographers love to spend their time arguing on the forums. The lack of casting abilities hit the “free” models. The lack of forum would hit the “free” photographers.

Sorry K.M. I’m on a phone. And my attempt to tag you obviously didn’t work.

Good thing....models want paid...photographers never get paid....so free membership for me is just grand...not so good for models

Ethereal Photography if you use a VIP account to get more TF work then won't it pay for itself? I think VIP is worthwhile and I'm going to upgrade for a month to try it once I edit more pictures.

The VIP branding is naff though.

YorVikIng

> The site should take forum post privileges away from “free members” sooner than prevent them for issuing paid castings.

I like that idea.

On balance ... I think this is a really good move.

> Less snowflakes, chancers, wannabees, money orientated individuals ... More people that are serious about modelling and/or photography.

> More people that can 'connect' and shoot for FUN (that is how I remember the environment in the late 90s and early 00s ... an early internet era + early digital camera era thereafter (say 2001 to 2006++) **

> More people drawing a more obvious line between being a 'for fun' / amateur / hobby / recreational model ... and those wanting to transition things to a status where they very consciously cross over into wanting to make money, more than it be a more ocassional (or frequent) formerly mentioned status.

I think it is a WIN WIN for everyone (incl. Purpleport team).

Hopefully if we can also educate a lot more people that, (historically, generically and especially in a photographer-model sense) - that the terms 'collaboration' and 'collabortaive' means TF: shooting together where NOBODY gets paid. 

Unlike a tie-up between e.g. Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney (two ALREADY WEALTHY individuals who are 'collaborating' on Ebony and Ivory, and who will financially BOTH gain from teaming up).

-

** incidently: From around 2007/2008 (notably the launch era of iPhone and Android devices) heralded for me, a largely rueful time. Two big companies created a duopoly of neat, easy to use/access, yet horrendously dumbed-down software interfaces, in order to trawl the lowest common denominator of 'technophobe' and/or 'lazy/ignorant/please spoon-feed me' types from within the overall consumer population. Harsh comment but IMHO very true.

A quite massive change to how software was interfaced upto then (a huge dumbing down or over-simplification thereof). PDAs from Psion were 'serious' devices (less serious but still good from Palm, Nokia, Blackberry and others thereafter) - all encouraged sophisticated and in-deth input, whether by physical keyborad or/and early touchscreen methods. Upto then, the geeks/enthusiasts/longterm 'time-investors' could be confident that their hard earned learning and skills would give an edge over 'dabblers' or individuals that couldn't be bothered to understand the underlying menus, navigation, programming and logical software interconnectivity of software on these devices. You had to understand how and why. The rewards (and advantages over folk who DIDN'T use them) were massive.

This era was also when cameras from Canon, Nikon and others were becoming better and better and notably (relatively) cheaper and cheaper, at whatever format and sensor size pecking order you wanted to play within. There was then a tipping point where it was suddenly NOT geeky or nerdy (or male) to be seen to be a photographer with DSLR sized camera. Now seemingly everyone is a photographer, everyone is a model + what was somewhat special or exclusive earlier, was now much much less so. Also it was becoming harder and harder to stand out from the crowd (as quality, accessibilty and usability of ALL camera devices and photo post-production software increased). 

Sites like this (and the whole social media 'thing') mean that a once narrow 'puddle' of a community, now feels like a huge ocean. It can be hard to see the wood from the trees - so much 'noise' ... even if now (eventually), much of that noise is of very high average quality, at least if you compared it to the standards shown back in say 2000-2005 approx. 

Edited by Aardvark VonEssfolk

The annual £36 is not excessive. That's just under 70p per week and admin have to do plenty of work to keep this site running. Become a member for all the benefits.

Aardvark VonEssfolk said

On balance ... I think this is a really good move.

On balance indeed -- it is a decision about balance.

I wrote a wordy and imprecise comment t'other day in reply to Paulinfocus in another thread about the challenges here; rebalancing the free and paid tiers of a site like this is always difficult. Sometimes it's massively annoying (like recent Dropbox decisions) and sometimes you think, well, short term pain for long term gain, which I think this one is.

Edited by Michael H.

YorVikIng said

The site should take forum post privileges away from “free members” sooner than prevent them for issuing paid castings.

Why?

Golding , the (possibly flawed) logic is:

- Inability to cast for paid work predominantly hurts models, because, in the main, models like receiving pay. If a "free" photographer uses one of his weekly messages to an unsolicited mail to a model offering paid work on a day she's free, there's a high chance she'll accept; whereas if a "free" model uses a message to an unsolicited contact saying "love your work, would you like to pay me £x for a shoot" the chance of success is lower.

- the model/photographer ratio on the site is approx 1/3, but the forum debaters appear to be more 1/10. So it is predominantly photographers who enjoy debating. By restricting this, and introducing a limited ability to cast paid, the "hurt" might be more evenly distributed between models and photographers.

Come on models. Get involved and debate more here in these forums so that it not seems to be the case that all is coming from one side.

;-)

K I M I L Y said

Previously, if a photographer placed a casting for paid work then free members could apply just like anyone else. Free members now have to apply via a site message - and of course those are limited for a free member. Net result seems to be that a paid member who places a casting offering paid work can expect fewer applicants. I imagine site strategy is to exert a degree of control over where paid work ends up, with the aim of encouraging free members seeking paid work to subscribe. In the meantime, expect fewer applicants for paid castings.

That probably explains why I got less replies to my last couple of paid castings than I have done in the past (that and the fact it seems the regular respondents to my castings have got fed up with being told they don't meet the stated requirements and so have finally given up). 

Not sure this is a good thing.

I can fully appreciate why the site would want to encourage people to take out full membership, but, as a paying member, if I'm offering a paid shoot I'd like the widest choice of applicants possible and so restricting the number of people who can apply certainly doesn't benefit me. 

Matt David said

I just read this, suggests they *can* request paid castings but only one casting per week.

"Free accounts can only post 1 casting call every 7 days. By all means post casting calls for paid work. It's fine here."

Edited by Matt David

Thanks for highlighting this. We've now updated the article where this (incorrect) information was. 

Laura SJ FD ok :)