BetterPhoto

Great inspiration through amazing photos, friendly community, and educational courses! I've been a member since 2004. My skill has improved through the inspiration and constructive feedback of the other photographers and from the fun courses! I've taken several courses over the years and truly enjoyed learning along side of other beginners receiving wonderful feedback from the instructor and fellow students.

When I've emailed the owner questions, I've received prompt responses that are professional and courteous. He seems to be very interested in your feedback to make BetterPhoto a great experience for the beginner photographer as well as the professional.

The monthly contest is a lot of fun! You can enter daily into various categories such as landscape, people, still life, elements of design, animals, and more. The other members are friendly and encouraging by commenting on your photos. Your photos may be recognized as Photo of the Day, or a Finalist, or even win the Category, or better yet, the Grand Prize! Either way it's so much fun to see the work of other photographers, veteran and new alike.

You know how your family doesn't seem to understand when you are on vacation and you want to be out the door at 5:30 am to drive up the long mountain road to a very secluded spot to set up your gear for the perfect horizon, sunrise shot? Or when you're out to dinner one evening and you want them to finish their dinner quickly because the golden hour light is perfect?! You're not sure what you're going to photograph, but the light is perfect for a good photo :). The people of the BetterPhoto community get you! They'll encourage you. They'll inspire you. They'll help you be better at what you love. Would recommend 10 out of 10!

Scam. After you pay there is nothing to gain.

All classes are for beginners. The guy that runs the site is not even a photographer.

There is NOTHING to gain. The "contests" are questionable and have no prizes like other sites. The "winners" often are photos that are out of focus, bad composition, look like graphic design computer generated images but not photos, cheesy rip off photos such as "an arm and hand stretched out holding a baby" (copied about a million times), yet some really really excellent photos but those photographers have not taken any Betterphoto classes. They came to the site as excellent photographers. I have spoken to many of them.

So many bird photos that you would think it is a bird web site not a photo site.

The people who run the site are useless and will not answer question, but they sure will try to sell you more things!

Pointless to join.

Stay away.

Join another site.

The written materials for this course were very good and the instructor's critiques and responses to my questions were helpful (although I am still waiting two weeks later for the critique of my assignment submitted on March 4 and a response to a question).
However, as the only student in the course I clearly did not get close to my money's worth. Among the benefits of the courses Better Photo promotes are receiving input from other students on your work, observing and commenting on their work, seeing their questions, and seeing the instructor's critiques of their work and responses to their questions. I received none of these benefits. I could have received the benefit I got from the course buy purchasing a good book for a small fraction of the $200 cost.
In short, I feel short-changed. I believe I should have been advised that I would be the only student and offered some other options.

Their customer service is non-existent. This USED to be a good site, but the guy Jim Miotke who started it has gotten too big for his britches it seems. I was a member for years and had one of their deluxe websites. I wrote countless emails to them with a question and have NEVER been answered, although my inbox gets filled with emails from them every single day, boasting about how their courses are getting filled up, etc. It's too bad because at the beginning this was a valuable learning resource. This site and its developer/owner are a perfect example of how moderate success can ruin things for their customers. All they seem interested in now are the courses they offer, which are questionable in value, since many of the things are on YouTube for free! Don't get hoodwinked by this site.