A lot of rejections recently. Everyone’s doing email these days, so I can’t post my normal picture containing one of the rejection letters:
1. Print Center’s Photography Competition- things are bad when you get rejections from competitions you don’t even remember entering (sort of the reverse of the “wow, I just found $20 in my pocket” effect)
2. PDN30- Actually, I never officially got a rejection for this, but found the list of winners on their website and I was not among them.
3. Center for Photography at Woodstock’s PhotoNow- Juried by one of the editors at PDN who also juried PDN30- two rejections from one person.
4. Waitlisted at Review Santa Fe- ok, so this one is only a half rejection. I guess where this stuff is concerned I have a tendency to be a glass half empty kind of guy.
It’s been 6 months and counting since my work has been up on a gallery wall outside of my immediate local area. I’m getting pretty tired with the impersonal nature of all the juried competitions. I’ve really enjoyed the more personal interaction I’ve gotten with people like Andy Adams, Jen Bekman, and Leslie Brown. I think I need to keep figuring out ways to develop those more personal relationships. Review Santa Fe would probably do me some good if I can get off the waiting list. Hopefully I’ll get some feedback from my participation in Critical Mass as well.
About a week ago, the battery died in my car. Apparently mine wasn’t the only one to die in our beautiful -1° weather (-16° with wind chill), because Sears told me it would be 2 hours to put in a replacement.
“2 hours!” I think, “I can do it myself in much less time than that.” I called a friend with an attached garage (unlike my neighbor across the street, after 7 years in Michigan I’m still not acclimated enough to the weather to be willing to work on my car outdoors in the winter), and she informed me it was available for my use. So I grabbed a new battery and off I went. After 3 hours and another trip to Sears to replace a contact that I broke, I was off and running with my new batter installed. I showed them. Later on that evening, I was thinking about what a glorious thing it would be to spend two hours somewhere outside of the chaos of work or home to just read the paper. There’s a point to all this, as well as I’m sure a lesson to be learned, but damned if I know what it is.
In an unrelated incident, my primary camera broke later in the week. The shutter lock jammed in the locked position, making it impossible for me to take a picture. This camera is pretty old school- not meter, not batteries, no chips, no sensors, etc.
My thinking- “There’s no way I’m paying $150 and sending this off for three weeks to have someone fix it. I bet if I just open it up I can find the problem right away.” Well, I’ve gotten it open, bent a spring and knocked at least one more piece out of place in process, only to discover that the inside of this thing resembles an old watch more than a camera (lots of tiny gears). My current thinking: “I just need to open it up a little more so that I can get right at the shutter lock- one more panel off the camera will do it.” Stumped as to how to get that panel off without inflicting irreparable damage, a quick internet search revealed a site that would sell me a repair manual for the camera, which I am now waiting to receive in the mail (the $43 dollar cost of this will put me over the $50 I estimated as my monthly photo expenses in this post). With replacing the parts I have and will inevitably continue to break, I’m confident I will have the thing back and working perfectly within 4 weeks and for under $200. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
I received my portfolio back from the Museum of Contemporary Photography, as well as a letter explaining that they were not able to use my work at this time. Bummer. I certainly hadn’t expected to end up on their walls, but I thought I might at least be competitive for the Midwest Photographer’s Project, a program that requires applicants live in the midwest and be willing to loan a portfolio of their work out for a year. The letter stated that “we felt that with more time and closer editing your project might develop more fully.” Not much to go on (it’s understandable that they can’t offer more feedback, and I don’t expect it), but in my desperate state for feedback I’m sure I will analyze it to death.
On a brighter note, they invited me to submit work in another year, and by then they will be looking at my work having already seen it once before.
I also got my packet sent back from Blue Sky Gallery. Living half way across the country and having had no contact with them before, I wasn’t the least bit surprised. Still, they show great work, and with a name like Blue Sky how could you go wrong?
“The Culmination of a Cautionary Tale about Adolescent Love”
I’ve been reading reports of Review Santa Fe over the last few weeks. It was a great group of reviewers, and from everything I can tell, a great group of artists as well.
I had a very strange experience with my Review Santa Fe application that is worth sharing.
This year, as well as every year for the past 5, I applied to the Project Competition. That is one of my most coveted prizes. I always enter realizing it is an incredible long shot, but the recognition that comes from being honored in the competition makes it more than worth it.
I have particitpated in the Fotofest Meeting Place portfolio reviews several times, and thought I would go ahead and apply for Riveiw Santa Fe this year, even though I wasn’t sure I would be able to finance the trip.
When My application came back for the Porject Competition, there was a post-it note on it saying my work had made it in to the top 25. The total number of applicants was over 800. That put me in the top 3% of all applicants.
At the same time, my work was rejected from Review Santa Fe. There were just under 600 entries for this, with 100 photographers chosen to participate. So for one competition I was in the top 3%, and for another closely related competition (judged from the exact same portfolio) I didn’t even make to the top 17%. Go figure.
