Looking for the best photography forums (high signal/noise ratio)?
I am an active member of www.fredmiranda.com (especially in the sports forum) and am looking to supplement my networking, interactions, and learning with other similar photography forums that have a high signal to noise ratio (little fluff, very few flame wars, etc.). The site should have a decent amount of traffic from professionals, semi-pros, and serious amateurs.
I'm not looking for dpreview.com-like forums full of people who just bought their first digital camera. Other forums I've found (openphotographyforum, photocamel, etc.) seem to have very little traffic in the areas I'm interested in participating, mainly sports, portraiture, nature/wildlife, post-processing, lighting, and the "business-side" of photography. A Buy/Sell area is nice, but not required.
Basically, I'm looking to see if there's another site out there as useful and beneficial as fm.com. Free sites are nice, but a moderate fee (under $100) for an active, useful forum is also acceptable.
First, I agree that Fred Miranda's forums are quite decent. I also agree that dpreview. while sometimes useful, has a lot of nonsense. Sometimes it's all I can do to glance at the "Pro" forum because it's been infested with people who think that licensing pictures for any use, forever, for $1 through microstock companies is a good idea and makes one a "pro". The trick with dpreview is to learn what people consistently make sense and look for their posts and not waste too much time reading through long, useless threads. What dpreview does have that makes it quite useful, though, is very thorough equipment reviews.
I highly recommend SportsShooter since sports photography is one of your interests and also because the topics are by no means restricted to only sports photography. SportsShooter is full of talented, helpful people and just looking through the archive of messages will reveal a wealth of information. The member portfolios are also inspirational, there are plenty of good articles, and there's also a classified ad section. Becoming a member requires a sample portfolio and a sponsor from a senior member but is well worth the trouble. Anyone can read SportsShooter but posting requires membership. It's only $25/year but it'll easily pay for itself.
Photo.net is another that's worth checking out. It has a large number of sub-forums on a wide variety of topics and, in general, the signal to noise ratio is pretty high. There's also an area where you can post a portfolio, ask for comments, a classified ad section, news, and reviews.
I also like PDN magazine's forums. (And, as an aside, PDN is a great print magazine, too.) Lightstalkers is also well-worth a look--it's heavily populated by photojournalists and my membership there has gotten me some contacts for assignments from photo editors.
And, while not forums--though they do have associated Flickr groups--there are two blogs I definitely want to recommend: Strobist, which is a fantastic resource for lighting, and John Harrington's Photo Business News and Forum blog.
I hope that's helpful. It should keep you busy!
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