Problems with photographic competitions!

[Jon Shiu]

A local competition I recently participated in had us submit one jpeg by email and then asked finalists to send in prints for a final selection. I sent a poor quality scan, but then sent in a silver gelatin print I just got back from a show in Toronto last year and it worked out ok.
Hippolyte Bayard Competition, www.viewpointgallery.org

Jon

[RDKirk]

Any publication that is reputable needs to ensure the photographers they pick for competitions are indeed talented photographers who can produce images that exhibit high quality craftsmanship, are artistically excellent of course, and have a profound body of work that is sizable and consistent. Simple JPEGs are not sufficient for making this kind of an assessment. I believe you also need to see the real print even though the final images are destine for publication.

You actually have presented two distinct propositions there. "Any publication that is reputable?" A publication concerned with photojournalistic excellence, would not worry about perfection in the print, for instance. Were there no National Geographic photographers--shooting only transparencies--or other PJs who created "a profound body of work" in your opinion?

[Stephen Willard]

You actually have presented two distinct propositions there. "Any publication that is reputable?" A publication concerned with photojournalistic excellence, would not worry about perfection in the print, for instance. Were there no National Geographic photographers--shooting only transparencies--or other PJs who created "a profound body of work" in your opinion?

My last reply was more about generating ideas. Some call it brainstorming, others may call it food for though, and as Tim Atherton just noted in his reply, "wow - that's some pretty wild stuff". The idea is to get stuff on the table for discussion without regard to whether it is a good or bad idea. That is why I ended my reply as "pipe dreams and ramblings".

My statement about "Any publication that is reputable" was not well qualified. What I was referring to was publications whose focus was on fine-art photography like View Camera or Camera Arts. National Geographic is more about stock photography relating to feature articles. However, this does not mean that photographers for National Geographic are not artist, but their focus is slightly different then a pure fine-art photography.

Furthermore, I believe once a photographer weaves politics or socialism into his images it is no longer fine-art, but rather propaganda unless it is practiced at an extremely high level. By this definition most photojournalist and stock photographers are not fine-art photographers. They are nothing more then what their job title states.

[RDKirk]

Furthermore, I believe once a photographer weaves politics or socialism into his images it is no longer fine-art, but rather propaganda unless it is practiced at an extremely high level. By this definition most photojournalist and stock photographers are not fine-art photographers. They are nothing more then what their job title states.

Back in my youth, it was a central ethic of journalism that if you could discern the politics of a journalist from his work, he was a bad journalist. I'll give you that in journalism today, that ethic appears to have been largely forgotten.

However, I won't give you the unqualified statement that even by your definition, "most photojournalists and stock photographers" even today are nothing more than propagandists.

And there is some fine art that is very clearly propagandistic, such as some of Goya's work.