We should be helping each other, not hurting each other

Lenswonder Your reading of my post is absolutely not what I'm talking about. It appears that you are now trying to dismantle my post by diverting the conversation towards what you perceive to be two different topics.

My thread is in NO WAY Nude vs Fashion.

The thread is going fine and I'm here to give and get inspiration from each other in terms of respectful discourse.

MaristarOxley call it what you want dismantle , negativity whatever.

You can't fool the readers.

Your threads before went a similar way, nowhere because you can't accept things are the way they are.

I will let you enjoy your positive thread so I'm not accused of something that is not my intention. You are writing things than claiming you haven't?

Leave you to it.

Edited by Lenswonder

Lenswonder why did you get involved if you say my previous threads went the same way. Surely you should just not come into the thread.

MaristarOxley because you made claim this is a positive thread two times , when asked you reinforced that yet the answers you are giving out state something different.

You previous threads were always about your castings and how they are not successful. You clouded that here with this pushing of positivity but dismantled it yourself by bringing up fashion Vs nudity. That is your own doing not mine.

You can't write things than expect people to pretend they're not reading it.

Edited by Lenswonder

So much toxicity on one forum.

I don't see it anywhere else.

It's bizarre.

Dennis Bloodnok Photography I don't entertain the idea of shutting anything down, even if I don't like most of the topics on the chats. Everyone should be able to post. The going off topic on a chat, I feel can only stop within the chats when mods put a stop to it at the time of the discussions.

Lenswonder my point regarding this is just don't get involved in the discussion. You have not contributed to the topic at hand.

MaristarOxley 'We should be seeing a wide variety of genres here'

The quote above is the best thing you've typed on here and that is the responsibility of both models and photographers , no one side is to be pointed at for were the site is. Not even the market, the market is not a brainless monster.

Edited by Lenswonder

Lenswonder ??

MaristarOxley said

"But not long afterwards, the style of photography gravitated towards nude work or implied, or fantasy. That's fine, but it soon left me not finding photographers doing a more commercial fashion or editorial style."

By the time I consider posting to these things, it's 8 pages deep, mostly unread by everyone, and soon to be locked. But here goes. 

I think with this point, a lot of this can boil down to what a model wants and how they wish to engage. I think the photographers interested in Fashion are here, but it's down to people who dig under the surface. In my passing, many people in groups sneer at what is considered fashion here and state that it isn't. At least they did, the last couple of times I saw it come up. Someone said earlier that models are not interested in groups...so if that is believed to be the case, I'm not sure that photographers need to try and encourage them

The Ghost said

Most models use the forums as a way to populate their "Who I Don't Want To Work With" lists. They also won't participate because there is a belief that photographers do exactly the same.

 Yes, the groups helped highlight to me bigoted models as well as models who gleefully made generalising comments trashing hobbyist photographers. There are people in the groups who don't seem to actually enjoy what they do. Fair enough.

MaristarOxley said

That's fine. I got involved in forums to see if I could find contacts. I did at the beginning, but it quickly became bombarded with a lot of negativity, especially for models posting.

I genuinely would love to hear what we as a group could try to do to make collaborations, connections better.

That first comment I kinda somewhat agree. That said it seems that certain models are just as negative towards photographers, but are sometimes weirdly cheered on by photographers here. *shrug*.

To make collaboration/connections better? If you want engagement you have to be engaging. I'm gonna say my boring line. So much of this boils down to logistics/cost for me.  Like now? There's not really much point for me engaging with many models unless they are close and/or I've worked with them before. There's little reason for me to push any networking far. I've been made redundant. When you speak to models they often want to shoot in the near near future. Not that possible for me at the moment. Shoots cost. Even when they don't.

But connections may be better if models liked people's work and talked about it outside of "I like your work. Here's my rates." I don't mean to be trashing on models wanting to be paid as such. It's simply just the fact that this is all, very transactional. Possibly a reason why it's difficult.

it would be nice to have a place that the models feel welcomed and not pushed out as I'm sure alot of them are interested in fashion but hell no they ain't gonna be posting in the group posts because they just get shot down. I think Russ's suggestion about making your own group post where you can invite people would help create a safer and more welcoming environment for chat and discussion if the OP can have some control over members in the group ie by removing disruptive people from the discussion where they feel it's necessary.

if that can be done, or something like that then people can chat and collaborate quite freely and it should open up avenues for people.

Edited by parkway

Afrofilmviewer models are interested in groups, but are discouraged to do so. They also don't take part because many many models are here as their business, so are more interested in castings and earning money. Forums to them are irrelevant. I would disagree, but I'm an old lady, who earns income from my agency bookings.

Groups do expose things about models and photographers that are not known otherwise. I have found that it really helps to know the person you are going to work with. It's more important here, because there is no mediator. My agency does all the hard work for me when I am booked for a job. If anything goes wrong, I report it to them and they do handle issues. On here we have to do it ourselves with no support for many things from PP, because they are not responsible for us on or after a shoot.

The connections should go both ways.

Many models on this platform are not interested in being nice, as they want to earn money and not friendships. They get bookings because they fir the bill for the photographers. I mainly do tfp collaborations, so I am more likely to want to know who I'll connect with.

parkway I tried that a while ago and got zero response. I tried posts in the model chat group and there's no traffic in there.

The General chat is good, but lately, the Games groups are the most active.

parkway it sure would be nice for models on here and in general to have a voice that doesn't get a put down.

I'm not keen on a private group, as it creates a clique that defeats the purpose of me wanting collaborations and connections in the Groups.