Orchids

You are welcome. I just wish I could find out how to edit this group once it's there to get at least an icon... and how to find strangers with a certain topic interest and invite them to join.
Guess this is never becomming a very busy forum, just a little gallery of a select few and rather different orchid fotographers. I myself mostly take shots of protected european montane native plants in situ, rarely a quick snap of windowsil and table deco phaleonopsis during family event shooting, whilst you seem to work with a variety of tropical subjects and rather professional macro equipment, and my other invitations so far seem not have met with any interest...

Hey there =) Found your grp. through a comment regarding your troubles getting a group icon to work properly. Hope you don't mind me joining.... I will have hundreds of orchid photos to share here as I get my collections moved over.

Anyway.... The trick with the group icon.... Open the image you want to use for it on your computer in any image editing program and resize it to 50x50 pixels. Then you should have no trouble setting it as a group icon. If you need help, feel free to send me a message =)

OH..... Put in the name of the grp. again without any spaces or symbols. It's not looking for a URL but a name to assign for the URL. So, in your grp's case, try putting in "Orchids" .... Without the quotes.

That one had me a little confused, too, when I setup Amazing Details, too -- especially given that the grp. has a two word name. LOL! I futzed around with it several times before I understood what it was looking for.

You're welcome =)

I don't think anyone who has a foot here and one in ipernity truly wants to leave the latter. The IMA's efforts, while admirable, are still alienating people with talks of unsustainably high fees. The more people voiced their concerns about it, the more they encountered ridicule and resistance. Ipernity was about photo sharing as a community and had a wonderful, diverse international feel to it.... But these new fees will destroy all that because it does not take into account exchange rates and the fact that not everyone lives in one of the [few] well-off countries in the European Union.

I, for one, do not go out of my way to encourage people to stay or leave ipernity. What I do is show that there is an alternative. Not a perfect carbon copy of ipernity, but, with enough new membership and interest, this platform could certainly be expanded and/or improved upon. There is no reason for anyone to feel they have no choice but to swallow the unreasonable rates to continue on a photo sharing site. I feel bad for them folks, too, because they have to bear the pressures of others entreating them to stay on a site which, for good reason, they feel they will need to leave.

Lastly, if that fee of 50€ is indeed final and begins to be enforced, I will be among the first out the door. Not on the grounds of affordability in my case as much as the knowledge that the fee is way above the market rate and completely unfair --- especially since they made no efforts beforehand to make the site sustainable without doubling the membership fees. Furthermore, many of my own contacts will leave ipernity because of that fee.... So what reason would I really have to stay? Photo sharing like this should be a joy in life, not a burden on one's finances. And the IMA is turning deaf ears to people's pleas to keep the rates reasonable.

So, good luck convincing your contact to stay with ipernity.... But, you might want to first understand why it is they feel they want to leave before things are finalized with the site.

Me.... I'm basically leaving now because my club membership will be up at the end of March. At that point I will lose access to my older content -- which in many case is part of blogs or articles or other sharing activity.... So, if I can't have access to my own content, I will delete it from the site... Simple as that. My account will remain active until the final figures come out for what memberships will definitely cost, etc.

The owners and/or IMA could easily have prevented this migration from the site by at least removing club expiration dates from all paid accts. so that their loyal customers could continue to use the site in full while things behind the scenes were worked out. They chose not to do that. As such, they should not be surprised that people leave or, at the very least, stop uploading new content.

@Sonja....

Ah.... Yes, I definitely understood you wrong ;) Thought you were trying to convince someone to go back to ipernity =\\ Sorry!!

I definitely think that when they start imposing the ridiculous €50 fee, more people will give up on the site and leave. Especially those with free accts. & those who use the site minimally. I know my family members all said to delete their accts. for them. That spam email stuff was definitely unwelcome, too --- I myself received it more than once. I refused to support the site that way.... I don't believe in bailing out failed businesses -- as much as they want people to believe they're not a business (when you collect money for services rendered & have staff you pay, you're a business). As I posted in one of the discussions there, I paid for their service from the first week so to now ask for more money when they mismanaged both the finances & site is unfair & unethical. And IMA is doing all this fundraising, etc., for a site they don't even own --- Ipernity SA hasn't yet turned over ownership. The whole thing stinks..... As does the site chosen to collect the money. It's not secure and doesn't accept the most secure methods of payment.... Not that it necessarily matters to me since I was never intending to support them in their failures -- if the site is resurrected & fees are fair, I might reconsider because I don't want to lose my contacts.

My paid membership at ipernity will be up next week, so I've been working to recreate albums here to lessen the amt. of effort needed to continue with photosharing activities. By the 30th, I fully intend to delete 99% of my images from ipernity entirely.

I don't understand the blind devotion people have toward that site. It's not entirely unique, after all. And the people who started up the IMA to try & save the site aren't qualified to run it --- it's like putting a bandaid on a cut needing 50 stitches. They have no business plan, no tech. people, no idea how to generate income --- aside from fleecing their members.... And when anyone mentions all that stuff their only response is, "we'll figure all that out after we save the site"..... That's not a very reassuring business-like answer is it? They want people to invest in the site but have no idea what they're doing aside from taking their money.... I wish them luck, but that's not a business I would support. Especially when any ideas anyone has put out about keeping the fees affordable are either ignored or quickly attacked -- as are people brave enough to say they will no be able to afford to pay €50/yr.. So, they don't care about their potential customers any more than Yahoo! did back in 2013 which resulted in thousands of members leaving the site and tens-of-thousands converting paid accts. to free ones. Now, a company like Yahoo! for which Flickr wasn't a major source of income can afford to not care about what the members of the site want for their photosharing site. IMA seems to think that will work for them, too....

Personally, I can't see ipernity surviving for very long. This funding crisis will be repeated again if it does manage to tread water because on a very small percentage of the site members are so desperate to keep it running they're throwing money at it not realizing/understanding it takes a lot more than just money to run that site and also, not getting that a lot more people will leave when the new fees are imposed & free accts. are discouraged and/or eliminated. It will be unsustainable in the long run.