Gurushots

Gurushots is a scam. Not only it is a scam, it has nothing to do with photography. It is a money laundering scheme for Russian – Israeli mafia. Just look into their investors, Roman Abramovich, Altair and Buran: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/gurushots. Winning the game has nothing to do with how good your photos are. Best photos never win. The same small group of people wins most challenges, because they learned how to manipulate the rigged system best and when exactly to enter, boost, swap and fill. Those people spend 24/7 playing the game. They don't have any photographs worth mentioning. After I told the truth about Gurushots, number of people they are able to fool declined drastically. They used to run 40 challenges at the same time, now they run about 20. In retaliation they took away my guru's right to run challenges. They do that to people they don't like. It's an incredibly small greedy group of people who are after you hard earned money. Don't give them any.

After 2 months and over 1000 challenges, like most people, I love the personal challenge to do better.

I have learnt not to post any pictures of people. My grandchildren photos went up all over Gurushots web promotions, even after I had taken them down. I complained, with a snapshot and they did not reply.

This is especially upsetting as there is so much uncontrolled pornography on this site. I don't trust the pornographers with photos of innocent children at their read disposal.

My grandchildren logged in and were shocked. There is tasteful nude art, such as an elegant curve of a back mixed with full frontal sadism and vulgarity. Gurus click on these photos and give the elegant ones picks, but they must be shocked at what the Israeli inventors of this game are unwilling to control.

I suggest you don't play under your own name, and don't buy any spam e-books from authorities on this site. It will tell you the basics of using a camera and to save your votes for the hours you think your challenge guru might log in. Not worth the 40 they charge for this e-book.

I was sucked in and quickly spent 500 on swaps. It was a total waste.

Final advice. It's for middling photographers like me who love challenges, but there is a lot of rubbish and porn.

Winning a Gurushots challenge has very little to do with talent and a lot more to do with both chance and manipulation.
Just look at how most, if not all members vote. The requirement for everyone to vote on so many photos demands way too much time for those of us with lives outside the app. This encourages speed voting which is simply tapping the positive vote button as quickly as possible in order to gain exposure for your own images. When your images gain the exposure you will also receive votes made by those similar fast button-pushing voters for the same exposure rewards. More exposure is given to those who wish to pay heaps of cash for image swapping and boosts. On top of this, I hear there are organised groups willing to help boost you for a price, sad but true. I also get the feeling that, like many, if I actually do get to Guru status I would simply consider this stupidity completed and give the game up. I also think Gurushots understands this mentality and have a vested interest not to let too many people attain this status. Like gambling addicts continually betting in the hopes of hitting the jackpot.

First of all, you get nothing on this
You give them money, they gave you nothing
Why waste your time money and effort on this unrealistic photo game.
This Photography game isn't accurate., they flagged everyone that those who always buy their product, and not giving you accurate exposure of your photo, because they want you to use swaps, fills and ofcourse the expensive keys.,
Hello? You can print your photo and exhibit your own!
Don't be fool of this useless, inappropriate game.,
This Gurushots not even deserve a star.,

THIS IS A SCAMMED GAME!
Don't be fool

Absolutely unfair "game" created by scammers for cheaters, there is no place for a true photography lovers. Do not waist your time and (more important) you money.

There are countless so-called gurus (I reached that status too, but it means nothing) running "challenges" where there are no real prizes, just "guru bundles" consisting of useless keys, fills and swaps. People enter all kinds of rubbish, from out of focus images to ones that have nothing to do with the theme, yet they make it to the top 100. Even some of the "guru picks" are of out of focus, poorly framed rubbish. This website is a total joke and money making scam.

There are countless "exhibition challenges" where all those making it to "all star level", and most who enter 4 average images get there, get prompted to pay and get their images exhibited. The so-called exhibitions are digital displays of your images where nobody views them.

The website is also taking money off unsuspecting folks who think there's value in keys, fils and swaps. These are probably those new to the site. With experience you realise that these are a total waste of money.

Overall, this is a scam, where the site owners con thousands of people and get rich in the process.

"Art of Photography", "Powerful Composition", and ""Your Legacy"... three contests in GuruShots right now. I realize they want to keep the themes broad so that many people can feasibly participate, but seeing as that they have at least a dozen challenges going at any time, it would be nice if the themes weren't subjective to the point of literally allowing any photo to fit within the parameters. Half the creative fun is in coming up with a composition that fits a theme, so when many of the challenges are anything-goes, it gets kind of boring.

Participants must also spend a tremendous amount of time voting throughout the life of a challenge in order to maintain the exposure on their own entries. It's only fair that if you enter a challenge, you should be expected to spend time looking at and voting for other entries, but the time requirement is so high, I suspect many users vote for photos they otherwise wouldn't. This method is to encourage users to purchase boosts (amongst other items for sale to increase your advantage in the challenges). It is a business after all, but it would be so much better if they would charge a reasonable membership fee and then greatly reduce the number of votes you need to make to keep a high exposure rate.

GuruShots can be fun if you don't take it too seriously, but I figured out a long time ago that quality and creativity or only part of what it takes for photos to receive high rankings in the challenge.

Poorly kept up site that is very expensive for no value received. Basically you are shoveling money to them to improve your rating. No actual feedback of helpful guidelines.

If your very much into photography this is a awesome place to see different perspectives beautiful learning for beginners or advanced and so much more studying purposes mostly to make you skills more productive & professional!

However if your into photography contest and your not from Europe or of European descent i don't really recommend you enter as in almost all the competitions I've seen very little to no none European based photos win or even rank anywhere in the top 10 this is a site based on the world view and so should the winners or even ranker reflect that perspective. If you are diverse and your work is diverse it would probable be better to go elsewhere as this appears to be a Whitewashing site base, as i saw very little diversity in race & cultural photography (asia, africa, latin america or other) all topics are open but end results seem to be the same, i challenge you to test and view from your own perspective if your non European especially? Or even European?

Yes i have also entered contest and still do and me being non-white have a great diversity of photos high-end and standard of all types of photography including European based and its crazy how my European photo rank and its not always my best works but yet they rank elite and above without hard work so i use this to my advantage as you'll get way better results in the contest hint! If you cant beat them join them lol

That being said you can still learn a lot from this site to take with you in real world scenario's

As most other reviews state, you always get pipped at the post by so called gurus and they're pathetic oversaturated HDR rubbish. There are a few gurus on there that are genuine and talented, but overall I cannot take most of them seriously. They must have $#*! in their eyes to choose so many terrible shots as winners. Many of which are off topic! I've asked many of the gurus why they do this and even how they win with terrible images. That's like pissing against the wind!
The game drip feeds you rewards, like a bandit! Then you're hooked until the penny drops and you begin to see the pattern that other reviewers have noted. Sifting through the cliche junk when you have to vote is monotonous as well!
The platform has barely changed in the past year or so. I've revisited it from time to time hoping the developers would improve the experience. Unfortunately this is not the case. It's also full of thieves who lift your work and use it themselves. As for customer service, well that's non existent.

Winning a challenge doesn't have anything to do with talent and totally based on votes and exposure which depends on the time of the day, number of people who are voting at the challenge at the time of uploading. Besides you need something called guru's pick to obtain to level up in challenges and you can get only if you are posting a new picture or boosting it at the time the guru is voting too, which is absolutely ridiculous given that you might have a number of gurus voting for the picture but you wont get a guru's pick until the guru who posted the challenge has voted for you. Recently the unmonitored reporting has started has started causing problems where a picture of a sea was in a sea based challenged was reported and they removed it. Its ridiculous how people putting up stupid reporting can impact you and you have no way to defend yourself. I am done with GuruShots just because it is the stupidest photography competition website. Don't waste your time on it. With increase in number of users it is becoming more and more stupid by the day.

Basically, a scam(ish) game designed to make money out of its players

I must say the idea is great and it would be unfair to say it is not about photography. It is just to some degree, and you get to see some really great shots.

Unfortunately, challenges are boring and repetitive. They seem to be proposed on a cycle basis. And, worst of all, most peopledon't care about them. Tons of crappy bad amateurish photos are thrown on each challenge, many of them only loosely related to the proposed theme (Things get even worse since many challenges are very loosely defined and almost everything could fit in)

Most people don't even care about other pics. It's all about beating the game and reaching levels (there are even onlineguides about how to hack / beat Gurushots) and you end thinking you can only do something using the game tokens (fill, swap, keys)with eventually you will have for (I never did, of course)

I could somehow cope with all this, it was just a time killing app I logged in to from time to time, just to pass time. It was about a year ago since I uploaded my last photo there and I only logged in this week just to browse around and see only the same old boring
Challenges were available.

To my surprise, my account was deleted this week due to "content violation" without previous warning or appeal mechanism. Now, I am usedto some very prudish platforms such as Instagram and even there I know how to appeal and what.

Here my work, which had been online for some years, was deleted because suddenly some bigot took a male nude with "pornography" and all my photos (just some of them were about the male nude) were down and my account deleted.

OK, of course I won't download this app again, you actually did me a favour. I am in no need to take part in a so-called "photography" contest where some idiot can't tell apart between photography and a male nude.

Eventually I will look for some interesting photo contest online, if there is one.