Llorekeeper's List: PhotoClub

"For example, Apogee Photo offers discounts to photography club members for online classes from time to time; photo paper companies offer product discounts; magazines and organizations also offer membership discounts. Access to special deals adds to the value of becoming a member of a club."

"The Historic Camera Collectors Club is an international club established to help camera collectors, photograph collectors, and photography historians learn about photography and meet and share our common interest with other members. We share and archive information about photography history and collecting. The club provides various information resources via original historical archives to assist members in research, documentation and sharing of information and their collections with others."

"The absolute best way to both recruit and manage members is through social media on the internet. Sites like Meetup, Facebook, Yahoo Groups, BookBundlz and the like are excellent places to host your group. Many of the sites are free-of-charge, though ones offering more unique features may have a small monthly or one-time fee."

"Meetup is the world's largest network of local groups. Meetup makes it easy for anyone to organize a local group or find one of the thousands already meeting up face-to-face. More than 2,000 groups get together in local communities each day, each one with the goal of improving themselves or their communities."

"The following vendors and service providers offer exclusive discounts and incentives to NANPA that are a significant benefit of membership. For specific details on these discount offers and how to activate them, login to the Member's Area. Not a member yet? Join right here!"

"Our aim is to take you from start to finish of the image creation process (from behind the camera to behind the desk). Where possible we produce tutorials while on assignment for our clients or while we are traveling between commissions. So our aim is to show you everything it takes to produce professional images from capture to completion."

"www.prophotoinsights.net In this digital photography tutorial video we go on location to Lyme Regis in Dorset and show tips on low light digital photography.
Step behind the scenes on pro photo shoots,view our digital photography tutorials and look and learn adobe photoshop step by step."

Personalized: Members design their own profile
Easy Messaging
Subgroups
Promoting Events
Text and Video Chat
Forums
Blogging
Photo and Video Sharing
Full Managed Service
White Label
Integration with Facebook and Twitter

""The bottom-line difference between Spruz and Ning is that we are a self-funded company that is already profitable," stated Jay Roberts, founder of Spruz, who went on to say, "While Ning had $120 million in investment from outside sources, Spruz has always operated as a boot-strapped company. This has resulted in our business model being completely sustainable from the ground up, with free sites being an integral part of it."

Other mentioned alternatives to Ning include Grou.ps and SocialGo, both with substantial funding. Startups who accept funds from outside sources have the difficult task of turning a profit much larger than necessary to maintain the service they provide, as most investors are interested in the acquisition value of a company."

"The past two months have been tumultuous for social network platform Ning. In March, longtime CEO Gina Bianchini was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. And less than three weeks ago, Ning’s bubble burst — the company laid off 40% of its staff and killed off its free service. Today the company, which ended its free service a few weeks ago, is rolling out the different paid models for its platform, Ning Pro, Ning Plus and Ning Mini."

"Lots of folks have lots of opinions about Ning's change of direction. Bold business move? The end of freemium? Seems like everyone has an opinion, and we'll be collecting some of the most interesting opinions here. Check back in for running commentary:

Fast Company: Ning Will Remain Free for Public Schoolteachers

SF Gate: A Funny Thing Happened On Ning's Way To A $4 Billion Market

TechCrunch: Ning Goes Premium 


NY Times: Ning Planning to Remain Free for Teachers

Steve Hargadon: New Ning Plans: The Good, The Bad, and the Unknown 
"

Grou.ps
Spruz
SocialGO
If you’re the creator of a social network, you should probably be passionate about the hobby, interest, community or business you decided to build a network around. And you should be attracting and enlisting equally passionate users as part of your community management plan. If you and your community can’t find a way to pay a modest monthly fee for the goods and services you use in your network, you might have one of two problems: You’re not passionate enough to moderate a community on your topic, or your topic isn’t inspiring your network to keep it afloat.

"Founded in July 2005, Mashable is the world's largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. With more than 15 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what's new on the web and offering social media resources and guides."

"Infrared photography, both film and digital.
Photojounalism, we are trying to secure a date with the editor and/or photo editor of our local paper.
Studio lighting, how to do some simple lighting patterns.
Book night, everybody brings and shares a book about photography and explain why they reccommend it."

really large list

"* Use tools like the Cision Social Media Dashboard, Twitter Search and Google Alerts that will notify you in real-time when someone mentions your brand, product, service or competitor so you don’t spend all day reading through feeds and blog posts.
...WordPress.com is a blog hosting service. WordPress.org is an open source CMS you can freely download and install on your site."

" I want to follow up on a suggestion made in tonight's meeting. As a regular feature let's have someone volunteer to show a "before and after" version of a photograph and discuss:
1. why did they take the picture originally
2. why did they change it from "before" to "after"
3. what techniques they used to make the changes (software, tools, judgement, etc.)

Perhaps do this once a month. Let the presenter choose print or digital as the display method, but be prepared to give some details during the discussion.

The objective is to share what goes on in the mind of the photographer that leads to what they consider is a better image than they originally took. I believe the discussion of this "why" will be more illuminating than the "how" but that's my personal interest behind this.....I have been reviewing the items on the survey. There were several good ideas. Some I especially liked are:
1. Give every participant the same file and have them put their spin on finishing it. As mentioned it can be an average photo and see what happens. This will give people an idea to improve PS skills and see just how creative people can be.
2. How about a monthly SOOC photo. Just in case you don't know, SOOC is 'straight of of camera'. That in my mind would be like taking a slide. The only thing you could do is change it to a jpeg if shot in raw and resize it. Nothing else. What a way for people to learn about white balance, exposure, etc.
3. The Iron Photographer could be a recognition to the person that excelled at the assigned subjects."