WildPhotos 2008

[pressld2]

Have you not come across Frans Lanting or Mark Cawardine then Pete? Oh well, Sophie Stafford is a new name for me.

Dave P.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by pressld2

Have you not come across Frans Lanting or Mark Cawardine then Pete? Oh well, Sophie Stafford is a new name for me.

Dave P.

no ive heard of both of them - though i can't see where on the itenery franz lanting is speaking.

i havent however heard of José Ruiz, photographer (Spain) ,Brian Skerry, photographer (USA), Stefano Unterthiner, photographer (Italy), Steve Winter, photographer (USA) or Xi Zhinong (chi)

also my biggest reservation about wildshots is that when you get about 20 plus photographers on the bill you only get a taster of each one, whereas imo it would be better value to spend the 165 notes on seeing three or four photographers (on different dates) talking for a decent length of time.

for example wildshots have Colin Prior, Stefano Unterthiner ,Steve Winter all together for an hour ie 20 mins or less each - whereas i saw Colin prior's own talk last year which was arround 2.5 hours -

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by eeyore

imo it would be better value to spend the 165 notes on seeing three or four photographers (on different dates) talking for a decent length of time.

I agree Pete. I'm going to the Andy Rouse Visions of Light seminar at Arundel in two weeks time. £50 for a full day (well, 10am to 4pm) and you get half of that back in the form of a £25 voucher with a well known on-line photographic retailer. A bargain I reckon!

Dave P.

[andyrouse]

And Dave you will be most welcome my friend, I will try to make it a very informative and productive day for you. Certainly the comments from Slimbridge were really superb and nice to know I have the balance about right as I always try to give value for money. I know that times are tight for some too so appreciate anyone coming along, right had better go and judge the competition, I hope that you entered Dave!

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by andyrouse

I hope that you entered Dave!

I certainly have! Although I have to say that picking just one photo was incredibly difficult - you bully! I've been looking at the other entries for Arundel and the ones for Slimbridge. There are some oustanding entries and I don't envy you having to pick a winner.

I've entered the competition for the mountain gorilla trip too. I imagine there were thousands of entries for that but you never know your luck do you?

Dave P.

[Tor]

Originally Posted by StuartDH

Tor, as a co-ordinator at the Wildphotos event, do they still make you pay to get in? I knew it was commercial, but I never realised that they were theat driven to make money Don't they give you a discount for spamming/free advertising on WAB?

Now that would be cruel if I was made to pay this year after all the hard work I put into WildPhotos I was never denying the fact I was part of the team organising WildPhotos this year – it’s not as if my name isn’t distinctive! – and I was doing nothing more than letting like-minded WABers aware of an event that may be of interest to them. As a fully paid-up WildPhotos delegate in 2007 (so I did indeed choose to delve into my ‘new camera’ piggy bank and buy a two-day pass!) I felt very privileged to play a bigger part in WildPhotos this year and work closely with the charity Wildscreen who run the event. And who knows, maybe next year I’ll be back to being a paying delegate, and will I still let WABers know about the event? Of course.

Originally Posted by StuartDH

I knew it was commercial, but I never realised that they were theat driven to make money

And on an aside StuartDH, events aren't threat driven to make money, they're driven to make ends meet. Be it a photographer running his/her own seminar, an organisation running a two-day symposium, or a company running a wildlife trip. In the end, as I'm sure you're aware, there are numerous costs to meet in all the above examples and any individual who is part of organising any of these events will want to meet these costs. And from my experience of organising a two-day symposium I can assure you that Wildscreen is not, as you so crudely say, "threat driven to make money".

[StuartDH]

After you'd only made 8/9 posts in the forum, and more than half of them were promoting the event, (some were removed) it obviously looks like spam/trying to get free advertising...which is against the site's rules.

Your other posts were along the lines of "looks like registration has opened", which of course you know is definitely the case if you're involved in organising the event. Maybe it'd be best if you declared your interests, or better still asked for permission before making posts that look like thinly disguised adverts.

The wildphotos name nearly got automatically blacklisted by our anti-spam setup, (and the blacklist is shared with other sites on the net), which we wouldn't want to do to any charity event.

If you are involved again next year, please use google ads to advertise on the site. We're also a charity and have substantial costs, and without entrances fees etc we have to try and pay those costs somehow

Originally Posted by Tor

"threat driven to make money".

Where I've made a typo above and added an 'e' to 'that', you've taken it to be missing an 'r' and made it 'threat'. It should read 'I knew it was commercial, but I never realised that they were that driven to make money'

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by pressld2

I've entered the competition for the mountain gorilla trip too. I imagine there were thousands of entries for that but you never know your luck do you?

Seems I was a bit behind the times - I've just caught up with Andy's blog and a very lucky lady named Debby has already won that comp. Oh well, I'll just go and unpack shall I?

Dave P.