My Backyard and other photo contests

Homeward Bound

With the help of some friends I have discovered a host of photo competitions on line. Once you had to have slides and labeled just a certain way and packaged and mailed off. Back in the 1970's I did actually enter and win some photo competitions that way. The digital era makes it all that much more simple. Except there seems to be little common ground in labels for each image and even dpi or size. And that is true even when they are using the same submission service.

I have in the last couple of months entered ANMPAS, New Mexico Magazine and Santa Fe Photography Workshops contest all through Smarter Entry. They way they are set up supposedly you can upload multiple images and then send them off to different contests. I could therefore only upload five images, what NM Magazine asked for, and send at least three of them to all three contests. But naming and sizing seemed to be an issue. And there was one judge common to two of the contests. She probably would not award a prize to the same image in two shows.

I have a much more organized artist friend who does spread sheets of what is in what show. I did too when I had to ship things off. I live with the assumption that my emails will show me what I submitted digitally or at least Smarter Entry will give me a clue. I think Homeward Bound was entered in both the NM Magazine show and the SFPW show. But I believe the common judge was in ANMPAS and NM Mag. It is about a lot more than pixels.

Icy Reflections

The SFPW show name is My Backyard. I decided on the whole to take a wider view of that term. But I was rather nervous about stretching it to encompass the entire state of New Mexico. A lot of those images had been entered in the NM Mag show. So I focused on my neighborhood for Backyard.

Morning of the Elk

Debated Morning of the Elk but I entered that in the New Mexico Mag show. And while one of my most popular and profitable images it has not won a prize, and is taken on my Nikon D90 with only 12.3 mp. Fall dominated my NM Mag entries and it appeared snow was going to dominate the SFPW contest. I think part of that was sort of perverse because I did not want to be in competition with kids cannon balling into wading pools. Debated the one below of my garden fence. Much to recommend it. But it just did not seem Santa Fe enough. It was really my backyard, however.

End of Season

Another photo that is really my backyard is Cookout Canceled below. It reminded me of another photo I had taken a couple years ago of chairs and snow. Well several photos of chairs and snow.

Cookout Canceled

Seats Taken

Waiting for summer

I like presenting a "body of work" to judges. I always think of painting shows where all three of my pieces are shown and I want them to hang well together if that is what those installing the show want to do. But submitting three pictures with snow covered chairs is probably a bit over the top. And another change of the digital era is only one of the shows I entered in this round ends up with a printed, matted, and framed photograph for hanging and that was the ANMPAS show and Burn which sits in my studio awaiting the day it goes to Albuquerque.

The digital, on line shows, seem to be a current trend and one I can approve of as it costs the photographer far less. New Mexico Magazine will publish some of the winners, but mostly the top photos will appear on websites for both organizations. For My Backyard I entered Homeward Bound, Icy Reflections, and Cookout Canceled.  The others await in a folder marked Photo Entries on my computer.