Yeah, I tried DVA too. I was ticked over the allowance of wholesale image theft ("fraud") that was able to skate by here and played with the idea of pulling up stakes completely. I ended up staying to try to get the fractal gallery some respect and wait for the AOY thingie to be decided. Would have let the whole group down if I'd bailed. Anyhow, I ended up staying here and protecting myself from "artists" like that by watermarking all of the images that I expect to offer as prints. I hope it hasn't bothered anyone but in lieu of events it was the only way to protect my stuff. Here's my take on DVA. I think the overall quality of images sent to that site daily - by the tens of thousands! - is sorely lacking in a big way. If you browse the images sent in daily, 80 out of 100 are either not too good or some adolescent sending in provocative digi-photos of themselves. That got REAL old quick. As to the Daily Deviation thing - like you, I got one too. Almost the first day I started posting there. (I posted nothing the first 2 years I had a logon) I was really psyched and proceeded to fire what I considered the 30-40 best shots in my "arsenal" into a wall of relative indifference. Not very encouraging. But they weren't flames - not sure that matters, they might just suck - lol. As to the "game", it is really much worse than here, IMO. At DVA, the software even tells you when someone has "voted" for your pic by adding it to their "favorites" list. These faves are added up to put together a sort of Hot 7 (or 6 or 8?) list for that week. MUCH more opportunity for "vote swapping" there. There's one guy in particular who comments almost every image while upping anywhere from 3 to 6 images day, EVERY day since I started there in like July. No pride or selectiveness at all. And flames rule there. Anything other than a flame is pretty much ignored as being not part of the clique. And the fractal page is also almost totally ignored by the admins at DVA, as witnessed by the VERY few Daily Deviations awarded to anyone at all from the fractals page. I think that the level of art at Rendo exceeds that at DVA by a good bit especially on the fractal page and we seem to get the "cream of the crop" here as far as flames go, too. The only thing DVA is about is quantity and they are proud of it as witnessed by their counter that updates in real time. I've farted around with opening a prints account there but a few things worry me. Will they be honest about how many sold? And more likely - will ANY ever be bought? It IS the internet, their clientele is typically as monetarily challenged as me (means broke! lol) and there is just such a huge amount of stuff available yours can get lost easily in the crowd. They do have a very competitive price on canvas ("fine art" giclee, I think) prints that is pretty attractive even if just printing for yourself. Of course people carped about it because - as with all quality goods - it's isn't "cheap". Anyhow, that's just my take (read opinion) and I could be wrong. I think we have it better here at Rendo than we think, sometimes. Just browse the "All and All" page. Everyting is pretty much artistic, even the worst Poser "t&a" at least looks somewhat polished even if it isn't maybe your taste. And, as I said, ---IHMO---, the overall level of fractals and flames here is better, too. Rick