FOTOWEEKDC - My submission experience

I completely forgot about the FOTOWEEKDC deadline, and got the reminder email just in time.

The image selection process
I spent Monday night scouring through my images, and settled on 4 to submit. Ok, so it wasn't that easy to do. I wanted to submit a personal essay on my trip to Honduras, but wasn't able to pull a story out the images i wanted to use. This, for me, is my biggest problem. I do really well with taking individually strong images, but I am sort of lacking in the storytelling realm and putting a set of images together as one body. It's a problem I also have with writing =) Once I came to this conclusion, I decided it would be better to do just individual images, and submitted one fine art image, and three landscapes. I've never thought of myself as particularly strong at or interested in landscapes, but I seem to take a lot of them now for my personal work.

Pro or Amateur?
After 2 hours I've finally picked my final images. Now I'm hustling to resize and label my images, and for some reason or another start looking at the rules of the competition. I was ready to enter as a professional, but according to FOTOWEEKDC (and I wonder if this is true across the board), a professional is someone who makes 50% or higher of their living from photography. Hm, not so much an adequate description for me, so I entered as an amateur. I'm not really sure how I feel about being labeled as an amateur, but whatever.

My wallet
So my submissions made it in just minutes before the midnight cutoff when I see that the deadline has been extended to September. All that rushing! But no worries, I was able to submit mine at the original fee of $10/image, whereas now it's $15. That's $20 in my pocket for the next competition fee.

Expectations and Judges
I'm not sure what my expectations are for this competition. This is the first time in 7 years that I've competed; the first was in about 2000 when I sent some work into Photo Review, of which Kathy Ryan of the NYT Magazine was head judge. I was disappointed of course that I didn't win or even get a mention, but it was then that I realized how important it is to study the judges of the competition. All the images that were successful were very photo-journalistic and documentary in style, whereas mine were definitely abstract and fine arts-based. I did take a quick glance at the judges of FOTOWEEKDC; most are gallerists or curators, photogs or editors, and for the most part all are involved in commercial photography.

I have no idea how my images will be received. I love them, but will the judges?

love this photo!

Gorgeous!! Photograph by Shiho Fukada for The New York Times.

Love the corner to corner movement of dark to light, hue of the grass, simple composition, and graphical element of the treeline in the distance.

See the complete slideshow here.

georgia/russia crisis

it makes me so sad to see that this terrible conflict is taking backseat to olympic coverage. to read that russia is blatantly ignoring cease-fire opportunities and continues to needlessly bomb this poor country is simply abhorrent.

the new york times published this heartwrenching collection of images of what's going on over there.

i don't mean to be such a downer, and i love watching the olympics, but this story shouldn't continue to be overshadowed.

image by george abdaladze for the associated press.

dont believe the story behind this image

controversy surrounding the zimbabwean baby image has erupted and been contained. read the articles on this story from the poynter institute.

Image from Poynter Online.

how to look like a real photographer

A cute, tongue-in-cheek commentary on how people hold their cameras these days.

expanding on this, it's not just an issue of how cameras are held. anybody can look like a photographer, whether it be the traditional khaki safari vest-wearing middle aged man to the artsy hipster wearing extra-skinny black jeans. it always comes down to substance. the manual can show you how to hold a camera, but it also used to show the user basic composition. the manual for the first camera i got back in 1994, the canon rebel eos, had a brief set of instructions on how to compose the image. however, the manual for the digital snapshot camera i got in 2005, the sony cyber-shot dsc-t30, does not. does this mean that photography and cameras are moving towards being a tool to just recording daily goings-on, rather than a tool to investigate and capture nuances of the same activities?

the olympics start today!

yay for the olympics!

i'll be paying most attention to the swimmers since it's the only sport i really understand (makes me think about my 'glory days' as the co-captain of my high school varsity swim team).

savor these images of british olympic hopefuls, taken by nadav kander and published in the daily mail online.

heathrow terminal 5 reputation staked on new photo campaign

london's heathrow airport is taking an innovative approach to managing and enhancing the poor reputation of its terminal 5 operations through daily image campaigns. these images were actually taken the previous day, and are of real life people in their real life situation at t5.

with the onset of web 2.0, where the web is basically a community tool, blogs and social networking sites have opened up avenues for consumers to post comments - negative and positive - on their experiences. thoughts and ideas can't be controlled and people are smarter consumers now than they ever have been. maintaining brand control as they've done in the past is something that a lot of companies are struggling with.

i'm impressed that heathrow has taken such a creative and innovative approach to showing its customers that they are concerned and are taking real steps to improve their product. most of the time, this is done through online responses - for example, tripadvisor allows management responses to negative review - but there is nothing more tangible than an image, let alone real-time images. i'm eager to see the results of this campaign.

the site, Terminal 5 is Working, just launched this week.

thanks to PDN Pulse for the heads up and for the image.

"...favors safe streets and finds no romance in poverty"

says q. sakamaki, whose book "tompkins square park" recently hit the stands. an award-winning documentarian, sakamaki's photographic coverage has taken him from the brothels of south asia to war-torn areas of africa. however, it's this photog's set of images from this manhattan neighborhood that has romanced the new york times. the streets of new york city have provided inspiration to many an artist, from joel meyerowitz to weegee to andy warhol. i feel that all have, in some way, tried to portray the reality of this city, but it's difficult avoid its seduction. its this seduction, the obvious awe and love that is felt through images of the city, that makes it hard for me to believe sakamaki's quote, as beautiful as it sounds.

it's hard not to be pulled in by the 'plight' of the situation and it most often starts as awe and disbelief. i felt this in honduras; i was in shock by the living (or lack of) conditions that people in the two mountain villages we visited lived in. in a nutshell i sincerely felt that i needed to be the visual conduit between their lives and potential financial donors back in dc. i shot my ass off, and everyone was so gracious about having their photo taken, even the man who was writhing from a bullet being pulled out by the doctor. i admit that i totally fell in love with the project, i was so compelled by everything i saw and committed to producing the most poignant images i could. this is the'romance' that sakamaki refers to in his statement; there is absolutely no romance in poverty, but there is a period where the photographer falls in love with the subject/project; otherwise, there would be little personal motivation to shoot at all.