LensCulture Avis 8

They keep sending me emails, although I unsubscribed multiple times. Spammers.

Amazing photos, really friendly and helpful, so good at listening to what we wanted out of the content and gave us advice on good ideas for social content too!
Highly recommend to any business looking for professional content!

Professional reviews are a total scam. My critique cost $25, and I was excited to read what someone thinks of my work who is not a friend or associate. 20 minutes after I submitted my photos, I received an email with my submission critique. Yay! I opened the link, and what appeared was a two-page avalanche of AI nonsense. Just a chatbot regurgitating my "project description" but with a thousand added adjectives that were all sterile and unspecific. If you've ever used chat GPT, then you'd know by the first sentence that it was an AI job, and a lame one at that. And as for the critique, there was none. I was mortified.

Do not bother paying for a review of your work. Firstly there is no transparency and you have absolutely no idea who is reviewing the work. This makes the review totally worthless. It could be any bloke pulled off the street, and given the quality of my last review it certainly appears to be the case.

For the most part, the reviews I’ve had over the years appear to be cut-and-paste jobs.

My last review was astonishingly poor and appears to be written by someone who is culturally and socially illiterate at best, and racist and misogynistic at worst.

The reviewer was unable to understand my NGO series firstly because they were apparently incapable of reading the given captions, and secondly because the women and cows in the images did not “look sad enough” and “their houses look too nice”.

So ignorant I just don’t know where to start. Where did they find this reviewer?

I'm posting this because after the results of the 2022 Street Photography Competition I couldn't believe the blatant BIAS and NEPOTISM in the competition. I don't want to take the flowers away from the winners/finalist, but unfortunately what I'm saying might do this.

The problem with the 2022 competition is the Judges. Two of the judges, Matt Stuart and Melissa O’Shaughnessy, are members of UP, an international, non-profit collective of 25 photographers. It also sells books, art work, and has a decent following of over 50k followers on instagram. Matt Stuarts "Jurors Pick" for the competition was coincidentally another member of the UP Collective named ÉLÉONORE SIMON. Now, here's one of the problems... because this is a PAID competition where photographer's around the world PAY 20-60 dollars EACH for the chance to win prize money, gallery showings, and notoriety, there should be some definitive boundaries of who can and cannot enter the competition. In this case UP Collective and its members benefit from all of these things.

Secondly, and this might just be a very strange coincidence, is that some of the winners were also featured on UP's website. In the INTERVIEW tab of the UP website I started seeing some of the winners/jurrors picks. Argus Paul Estabrook, Maude Bardet, and Reuben Radding just to list a few. These interview were posted BEFORE the completion, and serve as a direct link to the the judges.

The truth of entering these competitions is you're never going to win. Obviously the judges had people in mind before the competition was release. For Matt Stuart, who I love as a photographer mind you, to clearly pick someone who not only brings more publicity and notoriety to his organization is completely unacceptable, and shameful to the street photography community.

Shame on you Lensculture for allowing such blatant incestuous behavior. Lensculture is clearly a PAY-TO-PLAY. This is a clear example of how photographer's that are already recognized in the community continue to boost their friends. It's not about finding new talent. Don't fall for the scam.

This website is proactive in asking people to submit their photos into various Photo Competitions which are all presented in fairly broad categories designed to capture as many pictures from as many people around the world as possible. You're allowed to enter one picture free but anymore than that you need to pay for. I'm a professional photographer and took an absolutely incredible picture (if I say so myself) but it got nowhere. I dare say if I'd have paid maybe it would have at least appeared on their gallery of submissions. I can see the lure of this to many people but as the saying goes, a fool and his money are easily parted. Stay well clear of these cowboys.

Lensculture is a scammy operation, just trying to get your money. They wrote me saying that I had a “good chance”of being chosen as a winner in their next competition. I asked them how many entries they had, and how many winners. In other words, what were the odds of actually being chosen? No reply. I would guess similar to the lottery - if the choices are not prejudiced by people they know. Their come-ons -“gain worldwide exposure” for only 60 bucks! Avoid these grifters.

This Dutch-based organisation run by an American guy tries to claim to some heavyweight affiliations — I was sucked in by their mention of Magnum, which they are not — but dealing with them was not good.

Their so-called "expert" practitioner feedback seemed like it had been cut and pasted; it directly contradicted information I'd provided in the bio, showing they didn't read anything I'd written. I'm not alone in that, it seems, from what I've read elsewhere on the web.

Even worse, they then uploaded all of my images at high resolution without watermarks, easily downloadable from their website or on google image search, despite multiple deletion attempts by me.

I have now had to write them a legal demand to remove the material or face consequences.