Someone else's Epic Fail post

Blake Andrews recently did his own sort of "epic fail" post. It's worth reading if you get a chance. Here's a quote:

"OK, so I sabotaged my submission and I have no one to blame but myself. Although I'm still sorting out my exact motivations, I think part of me didn't really want a show. All that time and money that I would've spent printing and spotting and matting and framing is now freed up. I can get back to sipping daiquiris by the pool. So in one sense it's a bit of a relief, one less thing to worry about."

Meanwhile, if you regularly read my blog you know that my own "epic fail" project has come to an end. This year is all about epic success. I'm embracing my marketable side: my goal is to see my own photos not in a gallery but in a store somewhere. The year is off to a good start. A nice little royalty check arrived this week for the 10,000 photos of mine that Wild Apple Graphics recently sold. I have no idea what stores bought them because that info doesn't appear on my royalties report. My dream is to simply stumble upon them somewhere.

Street Stories

Since the photos are already up online at the Kiernan Gallery, I thought I'd post the three of mine that were accepted and tell you the stories behind the photos.

 "Field Trip" (click on any of the photos to see them larger)

I was wandering around Place de la Nation and noticed a group of school kids on a field trip. Their teacher tried to give them a history lesson, but the kids were more interested in the graffiti that had been scrawled all over the statues. For me, this story reads on at least two levels, depending on how much information you have. The first level is about the interplay between the boys and the cherub. It treats budding adolescent humor, curiosity, phallocentrism (if you want to get deeper). The second level would require a closer shot and a knowledge of French politics. The graffiti on the poor cherub's privates reads "la bite de Sarkozy" (Sarkozy's...). One of Sarkozy's notorious remarks when he was campaigning to be President was that the suburbs (in France suburbs has the connotation that might be given to inner city in the U.S.) should be washing with bleach. That kind of callous, racist statement did nothing to help mend the gap between the bourgeois elite and the disenfranchised, unemployed youth of the suburban projects. The statue pictured is called the "Triumph of the Republic" in honor of the French Revolution. Today, Arab (especially Algerian), and to a lesser degree, West African second or third generation immigrants are often treated as second-class citizens (or, "third estate" I should say). In that light, the photo resonates on a more political level.

 "Starbucks"

I was walking around the Saint Sulpice Church (which tourists never visited until the Da Vinci Code), when I saw some girls at the side of the church doing photos in a swimming suit and a headscarf. They looked like students doing an art project. They were most likely of Moroccan or Algerian origin and the headscarf (which initially she had covering her face) with swimming suit shoot in front of a Catholic church was clearly meant (or so I assumed) as an artistic statement. They made their way to the front of the church and I followed them. I stood at the side by the church entrance where a beggar woman sat waiting for passers-by to put change in her empty Starbucks cup.  I snapped a couple of photos and exchanged a smile with the woman as she looked at the camera. Then I put some money in her cup and she commented on the shoot going on behind her. "Elle est belle, n'est-ce pas?" (She's beautiful, isn't she?). This was the last thing I expected to hear from a woman with such apparent dedication to modesty. I titled the photo "Starbucks" to draw attention to the corporate logo on the cup, which for me, brings questions of capitalism and consumerism into the story of class, gender, culture.

"Angel of Repose"

I snapped this in the metro, all too aware of the disapproving gaze of the people around me. Or maybe that was just my fear of being exploitative. As a rule, I try not to take photos that mock people. In street photography, it's easy to make people look bad. But the French humanist photographers I admire (like Doisneau and Cartier-Bresson) never treated their subjects with disdain, so my aim is to keep things in the humanist tradition. Despite my initial hesitation, I realized that the target of the photo is not the man but the ad campaign, or rather, the stark contrast between the real conditions of poverty and the carefree images conjured up by a large and expensive department store. In other words, if anyone comes out looking bad, it's the people who don't have to sleep underground. On a technical level, the photo was very dark and needed noise reduction and exposure adjustments in processing. One difficult decision was how much to correct the white balance. The metro light is dark and yellow, so I decided to leave in some of that color cast when I did adjustments.

The first and third of the above photos were accepted for the online show and the "Starbucks" photo was one of the 30 accepted for the gallery. You can see all of the photos on the Kiernan Gallery's website.

Epic Fail Update

If you've been following my "epic fail" project then you know that I had decided to take the attitude that you need to rack up a lot of failures in order to have success. If you're too fixated on the success part, you can get easily discouraged. If you take the "Edison tried over 3,000 [or was it 10,000? or was it 100?] different substances in making the filament of an incandescent light bulb" approach, then you have to figure that part of success is based on your willingness to fail again and again.

I don't think I can afford 3,000 attempts at contests since they usually cost about $25 in entry fees, so I have to be selective. Since my biggest passion is street photography, I decided to submit to the Kiernan Gallery's "Street Stories" competition. I submitted 5 photos. If I checked my email more frequently then I would have noticed the following email 2 days ago:

Congratulations on being accepted to Street Stories! Thank you for sharing your art with The Kiernan Gallery. The exhibition Street Stories received 312 photographs in submissions. Juror Debbie Hagan selected 30 images for display in the main gallery in Lexington, Virginia, and another 40 images for display in the online gallery. All selected work will be reproduced in an exhibition catalogue available for purchase from Blurb Books.

We are very pleased to inform you that Debbie Hagan selected your work for both the main gallery exhibition AND the online gallery.

Needless to say, I'm pretty happy with the failure to fail. For etiquette reasons, I think I had better wait until the exhibition is up before post my entries (and the 3 of 5 that were selected) here. For now, let me just point you to the pinboard on Pinterest where I put possible contests to enter. I update it constantly, so check it out if you are so inclined.

F-Stop Magazine "Relations"

Three of my photos are in August/September issue of  F-Stop Magazine  under the Group Exhibition "Relations" section. Here are the ones that were accepted:

Ambition

Trickle-down economics

A flea-market encounter

A few things I really like about F-Stop Magazine and my experience with the submission process:
1. Free entry
2. There is a clear editorial voice in the selection process. I don't mean to criticize other online photo magazines, but I sometimes feel like photo communities/magazines can take the focus away from the photos and make it more about getting lots of followers and playing networking games. Yes, there is an argument to be made for broad popular appeal, but it also nice to have a more direct editorial assessment that is completely divorced from the "followers" game.
3. F-Stop keeps an ongoing list of calls for submissions and other photography news on their home page. This is a great way to find new "epic fail" opportunities. I have found two calls for entries there that I plan on doing within the next two weeks.

If you want to submit to the October/November issue, here's the basic info (find complete details here):

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

ISSUE #49: Portfolio Issue - October/November 2011

Issue #49 is a Portfolio Issue.
Submit a complete body of work (12-20 images) along with your artist statement following the guidelines below.
Images must be received by September 15, 2011. Issue #49 will have an expected publication date of October 1, 2010. Only one submission per person for an issue.

epic fail update

I haven't done many "epic fail" submissions lately because most contests cost money and it adds up. I did, however, submit images to F-Stop magazine and today I got the following email:

Hi there, Just wanted to let you know that one or more of your images has been chosen to be included in the upcoming issue of F-Stop Magazine. The issue goes online August 1. You will get an email then letting you know its online and asking you to take a look.

Thanks for contributing!

Ahhh. Failing to fail is the best kind of failure.

Soon, I will look at a fresh round of photo submissions and competitions, so I'll keep posting.

First fail in the "epic fail" project: Foto8

One of the advantages of making a last minute submission to a photo show is that you don't have to wait long for the results. Here's what the rejection email looks like:

Dear Photographer,

Thank you for entering the Foto8 Summershow 2011.

 

Your entry has been carefully considered, however we regret to inform you that your work has not been selected.

 

We hope that this does not discourage you from entering next year and we remind you that on Friday 8^th July there will be a Launch Party for the opening of the exhibition at HOST Gallery, 1 Honduras Street, London, EC1Y 0TH which will run until Friday 12^th August.   Details for tickets will be posted on the Foto8 website shortly.  Don’t forget that you are also invited to cast your own vote for the ‘Peoples’ Choice’ Award.

 

The Summershow 2011 raffle, with amazing prizes to be announced soon, will also be drawn on the night. 

Thank you again for your interest in the Foto8 Summershow 2011.

 If you read my "epic fail" post, you know that I'm going into this looking to accumulate some failures ("fingerposts on the road to achievement" and all that positive spin). That doesn't mean I'm not trying, so I'm always still hoping to fail at failing, but this first rejection was more relief than disappointment. Had I been accepted, I would have had to think up a plan to get me and my prints to London on short notice. And since I just got back from Paris, another transatlantic flight would be a stretch. I plan on documenting the failures, so we'll see if there's anything to be learned from the project.

After perusing last year's shortlisted works (you can see a slideshow on their site, they range from "wow" to "what the-?"), I concluded that I really had no idea what they were looking for. Should I choose something from Paris? Some pretty? Something gritty? What? In the end, I decided to enter three (that's how many you submit) photos from my Utah-based State Street project. After all, Utah culture is more exotic (and certainly less photographed) than Paris in many ways. Here is what I submitted (and we all know how well it turned out):

 "Our fathers' God"

 "Temple City"

"Utah Yard Sale"

I obviously wasn't going for pretty. I still like the photos in the context of my project, but they didn't inspire the judges. Why exactly, I don't know, because the judges don't have time to give feedback on a few thousand entries.

I have submitted the same three photos to a show in California. I'll find out in a week if the results are any different. I leave for Cincinnati in two days, but I'm hoping to do one or two more submissions (with different photos) before leaving.

EPIC FAIL

When you have a PhD in literature, you don't have to feel guilty about watching TV. That's what I tell myself. And I'm not talking about Masterpiece Theater or PBS Newshour. No, I'm a sucker for competition-based reality shows like Survivor, American Idol, and So You Think You Can Dance. Food Network stuff isn't bad either, although ever since a friend showed me the South Park food porn episode (watch at your own risk) I can't help but hear double entendres in every commentary.

This last season of Idol, sans Simon, led to kinder remarks from the judges. If you happen to be a superstar and you're asked to judge one of these shows, here's a go-to tactic for humanizing and endearing yourself to viewers and contestants alike: talk about your failures. Oh, if you only knew how many times I failed before.... etc. etc. Sounds trite if you're in a cynical mood, but it can be inspiring if you want some positive reinforcement. But rather than quote Jennifer Lopez, let's look at what a google search for failure quotes brings up (and then I'll get to my point). Trite and annoying or deep and inspiring? You be the judge:

• "The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure." (Sven Goran Eriksson)
• "Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement." (C.S. Lewis)
• "Failure is the tuition you pay for success." (Walter Brunell)
• "If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative."(Woody Allen)
• "Try again. Fail again. Fail better." (Samuel Beckett) 

 There are pages and pages of these.
So why the "epic fail" post? Did I just endure some kind of epic failure? 
No. That's the point. I haven't been doing enough things that lead to letters of rejection.


This is where the "epic fail" project comes into play. If my current photography dreams were to come true then I would 1. get my photography published in some form (my blog doesn't count)  2. get shown in a gallery somewhere and 3. hmmm. I'd be happy with 1 and 2 for now. Other than the ABC Paris project, I've never even attempted publication. And with that one, I think I sent the book to about 5 publishers, made it to the owner of one company, failed, decided to abandon the project as a book and start selling prints instead, got featured on some big design blogs, signed a four-year contract with a licensing agency (super slow process, btw) and that's it. 


During Christmas break, I got the idea I would work on publishing, so I wrote a story on JPG, which got"story of the week" for week 1 of the new year, but didn't make it into the physical magazine, which was my goal. So then my interest in JPG began to fade. I'm a horrible horrible example of perseverance. It's worse than saying "If at first you don't succeed, then stop and do something else." It's more like "If at first you don't get exactly what you want..."


The new plan to overcome that bad habit: EPIC FAIL. It's time to start putting some "finger posts" (huh? fingerposts?) on the "road to achievement." I'm aiming to get some failures, and I'm going to start documenting the attempts as I go. I won't deny that to fail at failing would be the best possible outcome, but maybe that kind of failure only comes after the story gets epic.