Faith and 83 Years. Barcelona, 2010
So, you have been making images for awhile, you think you might have one or two that are pretty good, and you’d like to test the waters in a public forum beyond the superficial Facebook environment. Good for you! That was exactly my line of thinking last year, after two years of intense learning. I was having a hard time critiquing my own images and deciding if I was on the right track with my work.
First, photo clubs. Some are good, some not so good. Some have a reputation for promoting some very antiquated ideas while others are quite progressive. You’ll just have to visit your local photography club to see what they do and what their philosophy might be. Here in Boulder, both clubs I am involved with, The Flatirons Photo Club and the Colorado Nature Camera Club, are small, fun, local groups with some pretty good photographers as leaders and members, so I have been lucky to find two places that have had a great positive impact on my learning curve–and I’ve made some interesting new friends! The format of their meetings is this: the first hour is generally taken up with a presentation from a guest speaker, typically a noted photographer from the region. During the second hour, members present their images and the guest speaker becomes the judge and rates and critiques each image. Wow! Talk about feedback. The quality of the judging varies considerably, but I have never failed to walk away with a few lessons learned–not just from what was said about my images, but from the critiques of other member images as well. So, I recommend you check out your local camera club to see if they do something similar.
Next: contests. You see these advertised on-line or in magazines all the time. Be very, very careful! I, personally, avoid most of them. In fact, I have never entered one. Why? Well, if you read the fine print, many of these so-called contests are nothing more than a method for an organization or company to collect images and, after the contest, your image and the rights to use it belong to them. Now, not all contests are designed this way (bigger, nationally-known contests may be just fine)–but, read the fine print first! Oh, and social media contests in which folks “vote” on which image they like best? Don’t even get me started on that topic!
Finally, art shows. These can range in size from little local shows that accept all comers to large, national, juried shows that screen their entries. In addition to getting feedback from a judge or judges as well as the viewing public, you can attempt to sell your work at most of these shows. Be aware that the judging can be very different from show to show and it pays to examine the work and philosophy of the judges to see if your work will even be understood by them. (You might not enter your bloody, satanic, lowbrow art in a show judged by a color landscape photographer, for instance!) On the variability of judging, for example, I had a fellow photographer tell me he won “Best of Show” with an image that wasn’t even accepted into a second show to which he submitted the work. So, if at first you don’t succeed, just keep trying until you do.
My first success in juried art shows was with the image posted above, “Faith and 83 Years”, a photograph of my mother-in-law Carme’s hands created just a few months before she passed away in Barcelona. I had always been fascinated by the story told by her hands–and the relationship she had with her faith, as symbolized by the rosary–and I thought a portrait of her might best be accomplished by photographing just that part of her. To make the image, I placed a black cloth on her lap while she chatted with my wife and toyed with her rosary, I set up my camera and tripod, then captured a series of images as best I could when her hands were still. I converted the image to monochrome, printed it at 18″ by 12″, and had it matted and framed. As always, it looks much better as a print than it does here on the web. For me, this image never fails to bring back powerful memories of Carme.
So, check out your local photo club, start presenting images there, then seek out other public forums in which to present your work. And as you do, you’ll find yourself studying your own work with a much more critical eye–and you’ll make yet another leap forward toward becoming the photographer you want to be.
Image Backstory, “Faith and 83 Years”:
These are the hands of my mother-in-law, Carme Portí. As a young Catalan girl from a small village near Barcelona, Spain, she lived the horrors of that country’s civil war as well as the oppression of the Franco dictatorship which followed, all while raising four children and suffering the early death of her husband. For the last thirty years of her life, she never remarried, remaining faithful to her “Ramón” until the end. Although she was 83 years old and in hospice care in Barcelona when I took this picture (2010), she was dressed immaculately and still had her wit and sense of humor about her—along with, of course, her enduring faith which calmed her spirit. I laid a piece of black fabric on her lap and captured a few images while she chatted with my wife–her eldest daughter–and toyed with her rosary. The rosary was a gift from a place across the sea in the New World: San Xavier del Bac near Tucson, Arizona. Carme passed away a month after this image was captured and is now buried in the cemetery on Montjuic which overlooks the port of Barcelona and the blue Mediterranean Sea. The image is dedicated to her.
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