Funny, I did a month's subscription there recently (regrettably) but didn't notice the content aggregation thing. I guess I just didn't pay attention to where the content came from.
My issues with this site is that the images are not particularly good quality and you barely get to see each model in their nakedness; as soon as they're undressed, they are being banged by some dude, who never goes away. Waste of my time. This is strictly a hard core site.
I checked out 21sextury this month, and the biggest (and most annoying) surprise was how small all the easily accessible images are. I mean, the ones you can view or download individually are tiny by today's standards. The only way, it seems, that you can obtain larger versions is to download an entire zip file of the gallery -- and that's only available on a few sets. It took AN HOUR to download one of these zips on broadband, then a further 30 mins or so to unzip it, etc... and all I wanted was about four shots in HD. Totally unacceptable.
And the content? Well, I don't know what all the fuss is about. Of all the bizzare categories, there's not even one for regular gals with bush.
Let's make a distinction between "fine art nude" and porn. We are talking about porn in Abby Winters. Sure you could shoot f2.8 in fine art. But let's not deceive ourselves here.
OK AW, here's the thing. I have posted reviews of your site before. But nothing ever changes. I really want your site to succeed, because the concept appeals to me -- natural young girls without silly makeup and silly clothes.
But endless shots of just a pussy (or more often, a hand covering a pussy) are not appealing unless you can see the girl who it belongs to... in reasonable focus. You so rarely get both clearly in the same shot.. unless she's 50 yards away. No, I don't want you to shoot with wide angle -- it obviously distorts the body and faces. But I think you should be shooting at f16 in acceptable ISO ranges (below 400). This, of course, means you need strobes. Oh, just think of it... the wonderful, natural girls you get with the technical clarity of Sean R. People would be signing up around the world!! But as it is, sure, you can quote some good comments, just as any movie publicists can quote a good review from at least somewhere. Use lights! It doesn't make the girls less natural -- it just takes them out of the grainy, murkiness and makes them more real.
I suspect this review is a plant by Abby Winters. Either that or perhaps you've never visited many porn sites! The photography is absolutely awful; it lacks fine detail in most sets, and shot without decent lighting. It is true that the models are great, but that's not much use if the pictures are worthless. Often, the only clear in focus unobstructed picture of both face and pussy is the last one in the set where the model is standing.
From what I can gather, most of the photography is by ex-models from the site. They seriously, and I mean SERIOUSLY need some professional photographers on the site. If they did that, and increase new sets by about 400 percent, then they'd be a good site.
I would rate AW much lower than "81" these days. I did a month recently to see if things have improved, but alas, they're worse. Yes, they use a lot of "Euro-girls" now, many of which are very hot. It's just that every other site uses them too, so AW has lost one of the few advantages they once had: unique models. Furthermore, updates are very, very poor for the price they charge. They try to fill in with those (low res) behind-the-scenes sets, and recycled "one year ago" sets, but sites like met-art or ATK have more sets in one day than AW has in a week... and the photography's better on those other sites too. Now that AW has more sets in bigger sizes, it's much more obvious how aweful their photography is, riddled with poor focus, grainyness, motion blur, etc. And as always, the "goods" are only seen properly in those closeups where the girl's face is missing. There's usually a hand or a dildo in the way. Sorry, AW, never again.
AW webmaster: Depth of field is one issue on AW, and continues to be. But that's not what I was talking about in this thread.
Yes, all other sites I compare to are viewed on the same monitor which is well-calibrated, and 1920x1200 resolution. I am a keen photographer myself, so I'm not talking out of lack of experience or judgement.
I can't point to a specific set, since I'm not a member any more, but if you look at the largest size images and think they resolve detail well for their size, then there isn't much hope. I'm not sure what you mean by "moderate compression", but if they're more compressed than 10 on Photoshop's scale, then that may be contributing to your problems. In addition, a lot of the shoots don't seem to pay attention to where the focus point is; you have the wall behind the model in sharp focus, but the model is not. Also, many shots appear to have slight motion blur due to too low shutter speed, so that may be contributing to the overall lack of resolution and quality too.
Honestly, I'd love to see a big jump up in image quality on AW because I've really liked the type of models used in the past. I'm not mouthing off for no reason. Perhaps you could show your large images to an unbiased professional photographer to get their opinion and advise.
I'd like to point out that although some picture sets have a large size option, the majority do not -- even recent sets. Abby Winters likes to tease you with only making some sets available in a larger size. Also, the pictures are not up to the count-every-pore quality that some sites give.
Regarding the bank problems, I've been told the same thing by AW before, but Wells Fargo Visa still gets rejected through GMBill. I've given up now, and it NEVER offers CCBill as an alternative.
Regarding the new site with big, high quality pics on every set... it is now mid February and it looks exactly the same to me with just the small pics on most sets. So when exactly will all this change?
ALSSCAN now have you enter your credit card details while still in the porn site's domain (Metartnetwork). Yes, I know it's an HTTPS transaction, but why is the site taking credit details themselves? They also have pre-checked cross sales. None of this makes me trust them very much. Met-art still has you enter your credit card AFTER you reach CCBILL.
I, too, checked out this site recently since it gets good ratings here (and like messmer says, there are so few natural pubes sites that one is forced to these shaved-like-window-dummies" sites to get any variety.)
Anyhow, to give ALS some credit, a lot of the images are quite good quality. But the thing that struck me the most was that every single model (aside from all being shaved) has almost exactly the same figure and face. Sure, some are brunettes and some are blondes, but as I looked back through their catalog, I kept thinking that I'd already seen each new model because they are all interchangeable. So boring! This was pretty much confirmed in a couple of sets called "Prague Auditions" (or something like that) where the site posts models that auditioned for the site, stating which were rejected or hired. It seemed that only the ones who fitted their tiny range of looks got through... and all the ones that I found interesting and a little different got rejected.
Oh well, nice if you like that exact look repeated over and over, but it wasn't for me.
Yes, great move for them to FINALLY upgrade the image size and resolution. Some of the new shots look great! (Hopefully, Hairy will do this too.)
Unfortunately, the Galleria site is so slow now that it's almost unusable. It takes about 30 seconds to bring up new pages and often times out completely. They need to fix this problem fast!
I'd have to agree with your review. What you say is also true of ATK Galleria -- despite the larger image sizes that they now offer, ATK's images often lack detail and look processed. I think at least part of this is due to over-compression.
ATK Hairy is probably the best quality, but it's still a mixed bag, some photographers being pros, while others are clearly amateurs.
2 Free K: Your comments are exactly the response that the DDOS attackers are trying to achieve. They want to shut down the site and prevent its business; you are helping in that effort. Any porn site that is relentlessly attacked like this is going to be down. They don't have the resources of billion dollar businesses like Wells Fargo bank, so stop making stupid analogies.
Yeah, the ATK sites have been up and down with this problem, but I'm sure these guys have been trying anything and everything to resolve it. I've had my gripes with their content, but they need our support in the long term. We need to fight the attackers, not the victims.
I'm guessing this disappointment comes mostly from the video perspective. As a photos man, let me give you a different perspective...
The image quality at ATK Galleria is very good (on average) and the girls are HOT with a wide variety of niches every month. There are also more galleries each day on Galleria than ANY site I'm aware of. What really confuses me is how Nubiles gets such higher ratings than Galleria, when Nubiles has fewer updates, lower image quality, and hands in front of the pussy on almost every shot. I guess it's down to videos again, but I'd prefer Galleria any day of the week.
Yes, Sean R has moved to wearehairy.com, although I sadly find that his sets don't have the same fine detail and apparent image fidelity there as they had on ATK (possibly due to something that wearehairy does in their post-production... who knows.) R. Williams, another ATKhairy favorite, has also moved to wearehairy, although not much content.
It's really, really sad how ATKHairy has sunk in the last year or two. It used to have 8 sets per day, and now it's just 2, 3, or 4 if you're lucky. And it's the same old models for weeks or even months on end, doing the same set every day, and mostly shot by amateurs like JSP and Foxy. Very sad.
Yes, they're claiming that "there's a shortage of unshaved girls", which sounds absurd. I did read elsewhere that ATK weren't paying their photographers on time, so perhaps those contributors are now holding back their work. Of course, we don't know the full truth of this, but my guess is that photographers like Sean R have a whole stash of great new sets ready but won't send them till ATK hands over the money.
Well said, Messmer. I hope that ATK are reading this, because so many of us loyal members of their site are now pretty pissed off that so many of the girls are like circus freaks with gorilla hair everywhere, tattoos and piercings all over their bodies,too. ATK have a category called "Scary Hairy." These types of women should appear there only.
While we're on the subject, one GOOD thing about the new comment feature is that ATK gets to hear how bad its members feel about the amateur quality of the photography (Sean R excepted.) So much of it is badly lit, badly focused, and not especially well resolved, despite the larger image sizes now.
Yes Bish, I've seen those gals, and agree that some are gorgeous. It's just that in the last 3 months or so, they generally haven't been, or else it's someone we've seen far too much of already. But I look forward to when there are!
Yes, I think that Sean R remains the only true professional photographer used by ATK. Sadly, most of his more recent sets are either of models that we've seen a million times already, or they're tattooed slags with makeup like a hooker. I'm hoping he gets some fresh, young, unspoiled talent again soon.
Oh, and I find it strange when people refer to hairy content as "niche", since most of the women in the real world have pubic hair. It's only niche in the porn world where models feel they have to be shaved like window dummies -- that's the REAL niche as far as I'm concerned. But everyone to their own fetish :-)
Totally agree about the Sean R review. But I would add that, in my view, he needs to drop the hideous makeup and lipstick in so many shots. It completely spoils it for me when the model looks like a clown! And the clothes? I know some guys like the fantasy outfits, but do we have to have high-heel shoes in EVERY set? I find the clothing so, so corny which also takes me out of the shoot.
I have to agree with the various comments here. To add some of my recent thoughts (late 2009):
1. Although there are several new sets each day, most are of the same models who appeared in multiple sets over the last month. The only difference in a model's many sets are the clothes she wears on page 1. The poses, etc, are almost identical, which gets tedious.
2. Quite a few models used to have at least one peeing set, which gives some variety and excitement. But now, ATK keeps the pee sets for its "watersport" section on ATK Galleria, so we almost never see a model's peeing set on the Hairy site. Bring them back!
3. Apart from the hideous tattoos, piercings, bizzare makeup, wrinkled grandmothers... we also have to get high-heel shoes in most shots. It's so corny! Please ATK, give us more natural girls in NORMAL clothing who don't look like circus freaks.
4. And yeah, the image quality is quite good in about half the sets, but it could improve, and much larger size options would at least give us the scope of better detail. Some sets are way over compressed, with detail suffering badly.
Still the best hairy site, but much room for improvement!
Hi Skippy, I wasn't sure if you were reviewing ATK sites generally in this review, or specifically ATK Premium.
The thing I've found with the secondary ATK sites (Premium, Exotics, Aunt Judy's) is that most of their good content is just a duplication from the primary sites (Galleria and Hairy). The primary sites also post MUCH more content each day than Premium, Exotics and Aunt Judy's. So there's little reason to sign up for the secondary ATK sites, except for a small amount of niche content which isn't very good.
On the performance side, I agree. Even when they're up and running, the response time is often slow. All the ATK sites are offline as I write this message, since they presumably all share the same server. I think there's been a number of DDoS attacks recently.
Oh, one other thing... much, much more unshaved girls please. The category is so neglected. I don't know why you even have a "shaved" category because almost all the girls are shaved anyway in every other category.
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