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Digital Jury Resources |
Hire me
to Prepare your Digital Jury Images |
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- I periodically send out a jury tips
newsletter -
if you email:
larry@bermanart.com
with Jury Tips in the subject line,
I'll add you to my mailing list |
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July 2012 and from this point on, I'll be
publishing my jury tips newsletter as a blog on the home page |
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Feb 2012 newsletter |
I've created a new services and pricing page
My pricing hasn't changed but I'm trying to make it easier for people to
understand the extent of what I can do and what it cost.
Two reviews of the St Louis Image Workshop Feb
25th
http://bermangraphics.com/artshows/st-louis-image-workshop2.htm
http://bermangraphics.com/artshows/st-louis-image-workshop.htm
Sausalito Juror
I just came across this podcast on itunes. It's an
interview with Alla Tsank, a painter and one of the jurors for
Sausalito in 2010. She's being interviewed about how she chose the
photographers in the show.
On Creativity
I also came across this podcast
interview with photographer Cali Hobgood-Lemme. Best in show at
Sausalito in 2010. She discusses where her ideas come from.
Broad Ripple Jury Results
I just got my e-mail with my ID number and a link to download the PDF of
everyone's jury results by ID number.
http://indplsartcenter.org/braf/brafscores2012.pdf
In case you're interested, my ID number is 605993 and I was juried second
in the photography category. I was wait listed and it appears I'm real
close to getting in.
What's interesting as was last year also, is the criticisms of the booth
display images. By far, that's what the judges made mention of. Having a
good booth picture has nothing to do with the quality of your art. It's
about having a professional display that doesn't distract from the jurors
from concentrating on your artwork images. Within the given time that the
images are on screen, the less time the jurors look at your booth the more
time they can look at your art. Plus, it's far easier to critique the
booth picture than what the juror may subjectively feel about the artwork,
which is a more personal decision. That's why the written critiques are
easier to make about the booth. I didn't notice any "lousy art" comments
but I did notice a lot of "lousy booth" comments.
Black Borders and ZAPP Images
Another artist confused by the wording on the ZAPP web site.
I was contacted by an artist for whom I prepared images a few years ago,
asking me to remove the black borders on her images because she read on
the ZAPP site that they were no longer necessary and that removing the
black borders makes your presentation more uniform.
Please don't even think of removing the black borders from your images,
and please make sure the new images you upload are formatted properly with
black borders squaring them at 1920x1920 pixels. Otherwise if you apply to
any of the better shows, ZAPP will add black borders to non square images,
reducing the quality to make them under 2 megabytes. And if you have
uploaded smaller than 1920 long dimension images, ZAPP will add wider
black borders on all four sides making your images 1920x1920 when you
apply to any of the better shows.
The statement that removing the black borders so you have a more uniform
presentation is not true and was removed from the web site two years ago.
Somehow the wording made it back, probably when an older backup was
restored. The truth is that the jurors NEVER see the black borders because
they see the images on a black page background when jurying.
And don't forget that most shows using Entrythingy ask for images
1920x1920.
The wording that ZAPP needs to remove is midway down on this page
http://www.zapplication.org/images.phtml
"Do I have to use the black masks on my images?
Black masks are no longer required. Removing the black masks from your
current images, while not required, will create a cleaner look when images
are viewed by jurors. For jury consistency we recommend not submitting an
application with a mix of images that have and do not have black masks."
That entire question and answer should have been removed. The fact that it
says that it creates a cleaner look is untrue because the jurors have
never seen the black borders because they see the images on a black web
page. And saying that you shouldn't mix images that have and do not have
black borders is also untrue for the same reason.
Fort Worth iPhone App Updated
Main Street Fort Worth just updated their iPhone app to include all the
artists who will be in the show this year. You can install the app on your
iphone and ipad and browse the images of the accepted artists at your
leisure.
I had previously written a
review of all the art festival iphone apps last October: |
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Jan 2012 newsletter |
CaFE™ sent out an e-mail blast
announcing an upgrade. You can now upload any size image and CaFE™ will
reduce it to 1920 pixels long dimension. Sounds like something I've been
asking ZAPP to do for the past few years. If you're not familiar with CaFE™,
it's ZAPP's sister web site and mainly used for grants and museum shows.
It's
https://www.callforentry.org
What does this mean for ZAPP? Currently you can upload images between 1400
and 1920 pixels without squaring them and ZAPP will add wider black borders
to smaller images
when you apply to a show. Ever since that started, some artists have been
applying to the major shows with inferior images that were smaller than
their competition's images. I predict that ZAPP will begin to allow you to
upload any size image and they will make them 1920 long dimension. Taking
that concept further, the quality of jury images will drop as artists will
be able to take a picture of their artwork and immediately upload it
without resizing or editing to make the picture look good or even
accurate. That will be followed by more artists wondering why they can't
get into the shows that they apply to. It's normal for me to receive a
call or e-mail for help because an artist's images won't upload. But when
I look at their images, aside from the incorrect size, the quality is poor
because the image hasn't been cropped or color corrected yet. The future
is to make it easier for artists to apply but more difficult for artists
to get accepted. Remember that the most important asset artists have are
the images of their art.Open Juries
Krasl (St Joseph, MI) open jury February 3
Columbus Arts Festival open jury February 4-5
Broad Ripple (Indianapolis) open jury Wednesday February 8
It's well worth the effort to attend one to see what your and your
competition's images look like. And you don't need to apply to attend an
open jury. Please notify me if you know of any other open juries.
QR Codes and how
you can use them to promote your web site and art
How to Photograph Art
I did a workshop in Orlando at the ACRE show January 20th
You can download my workshop prospectus and
resource sheet
Facebook and Cell Phone Cameras
Shooting pictures of your artwork or display with a cell phone camera is
hazardous to your art show career because of inconsistent image quality.
And you can't download your images from Facebook for jurying. Facebook
automatically reduces images to 720 pixels long dimension which would
require almost a 300% increase in size for jurying. Even more if the image
needs to be cropped, which most images do to be optimized for jurying. As
for cell phone cameras, it's not only about the number of megapixels. Cell
phone images tend to loose highlight detail, which I demonstrated at my
Orlando workshop last week. Do yourself and your art a favor by using a
real camera. |
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November 2011 newsletter |
You'd be surprised how many
art shows have apps in the iTunes store.
I did a review of all the
apps I could find and how well they display the artists jury
images. If you have an iPad or iPhone, it's a great way of checking out
your competition. Apply early - if you intend on
applying to a show. Finally a show has let the artists know that the
jurors will see the images (by category) in the order the applications are
received. Des Moines sent out an e-mail with lots of relevant information
to artists who had applied. It would have been nice to know in advance
about the image ordering, but they are one of the few shows and maybe the
only show that let the artists know. Make sure to check the "jury details"
of the show you are applying to. I wish ZAPP would make adding information
there mandatory for the shows using the system. Not to get into an old
issue, but the ZAPP shows have three options on ordering the images and we
should applaud any show that does it the way that's most fair for artists.
My first iPhone After using an iPad for months, and with
Sprint finally getting the iPhone, I finally made the leap and got an
iPhone 4S. What made it easy for me was the familiarity of the interface
from using the iPad. I would say that over 90% of the time I use a head
set with my cell phone because it enables me to continue working and I'm
now using a bluetooth headset with the iPhone.
Using the technology. I was working with an artist on
their display picture. They set up their display and sent me a picture as
a message through their iPhone. I was able to get the picture while
walking my puppy at the park, enlarged it on my phone and gave them
feedback on how to improve the booth for their jury image. And yes, they
used a real camera to shoot the picture I eventually worked on.
And speaking of booth pictures. I spoke to an artist who
had juried a major show where the jury instructions are not let the booth
image effect the score. Well, having a good looking booth made the jurors
take a closer look at the individual artwork images. And here's a tip I
never considered. Because the booth is on the right when the images are
projected, a booth picture showing mainly the back and right wall (and
part of the left wall for a three walled booth) kept the jurors eyes
centered in the presentation. That's compared to a booth picture showing
the back and left wall which kept the jurors eyes moving to the right out
of the presentation.
Not
licensing photographs to a TV series on
Sports Collectibles. What would you do if you are offered less than 5% of
the usage value |
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October 2011 newsletter |
Another
Online Application System with a different image size requirement,
just what the art show world needs. Wendy Rosen is using it for the Niche
awards. I had to upload images for an artist today. 4x6 at 300PPI is the
image size. That's 1200x1800 pixels if you have your editing program set
to pixels, which it should be. |
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September 2011 newsletter |
The care and feeding of your artwork images
Hopefully this will reinforce everything I've been saying for years.
Wordpress web sites for artists
I've learned how to build web sites using WordPress, the most popular
blogging software. That means entire web sites can be built and updated in
a browser, without the need of expensive and complicated web design
software. I put up a sample web site at:
http://BrokenCookies.com
6 Booths in 3
Years
How long does it take you to get your booth to the point where it can get
you into the shows you really want to do. I've been sent a half dozen
booth pictures from the same artist over the past three years. It's
interesting to see the progression as the booth became more professional
looking, with a few minor setbacks.
ZAPP conference
I'll be working with individual artists at the upcoming ZAPP conference in
Atlanta on September 19th and 20th. If you're planning on attending the
conference and want to discuss how your jury images can be improved, give
me a call to schedule a time.
The Job of Art
from the Sept 6th Robert Genn newsletter.
A study determined that it's in our genes
Recent research at the National University of Singapore suggests that
feelings of job satisfaction may be built into our genes. Certain genes
apparently determine how happy we will be at work--while other genes seem
to be linked to lower job satisfaction. If our folks were grumpy about
their jobs, we too are likely to be grumpy--and maybe even put in a poor
performance. In a study of 1772 people, researchers found that two genetic
markers--a dopamine receptor gene and a serotonin transporter gene--are
more likely to be found in folks who like what they do.
read the newsletter here:
http://clicks.robertgenn.com/art-job.php
Not loosing sight of what's important.
I'm working with an artist (handbag designer) who immigrated to this
country and is living on a shoestring budget. She wanted to apply to a
show on Juried Art Services and got my contact information from the JAS
web site. The pictures she took of her own bags were not going to get her
into any shows so I asked her to send me the five bags to photograph.
Having a difficult time understanding English, she assumed I was asking
her to send me the five images again. I was finally able to get her to
understand that I was going to take the pictures of her bags and not
charge her. The thank you e-mail I received from her made it all worth
while, and prompted me to write this. No matter how much you need it,
sometimes things are more important than money. |
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August 2011 newsletter |
I've moved the Art Show Photo
forum and opened it up to other mediums.
http://ArtShowForums.com
check it out and tell your friends about it.
A
moral dilemma for a show director
A show has a rule that no reps are allowed. A sculptor wasn't allowed
in because last year he sent a relative while he did another show.
This year he was not accepted and told it was because he had sent
someone else with his work the year before. Personally I feel that's
like locking the barn door after the horse has already escaped. From
my point of view, he should have been denied admission on the year he
wasn't there, or the rep made to pack up and not be able to sell.
Then he should have been told that he could do the show again if he
were there personally. That would be fair but that's another story.
There was another booth at the same show this year without the artist
present. This artist always does the show sending reps while doing
other shows on the same weekend. When the committee was asked about
it, they said it was because this artist always gives a large piece
for the auction in exchange for being able to send reps and the show
has made a lot of money from the sale of this artist's work.
Like I've been saying. Art shows are about the money more than the
art.
Booths again
I cleaned up a "grab" booth shot for an artist the other day. When I
uploaded it into his profile I noticed that the only three shows he had
applied to were Cherry Creek, St Louis and the Plaza. You'd think an
artist that only applied to the top shows would take more care in how they
do their booth slide.
Two
EZ-Up's trashed in one weekend
An artist tells the story of having two EZ-Up canopies trashed in one
weekend and ends up purchasing a Trimline. Includes links to news clips of
the storm damage.
Jury slide photographer paints out reflections on silver jewelry
This is really about telling artists the truth about their jury
images. I made a post about this on Art Fair Insiders, posting a picture
of the painted on sliver jewelry. Because I couldn't name the photographer
on a public forum for fear of getting into a law suit, I asked that if
anyone was interested in knowing which photographer would do such an
incompetent job to give me a call. Well, it seems that someone on the
forum contacted one of the jury slide photographers, who took offense in
my post. You can read the thread I started on Art Fair Insiders but
understand that the photographer who responded was not the one who screwed
up.
What I don't understand is why the artist's ability to get into art shows
is not the primary goal of every one connected in even a peripheral way to
the art show industry, especially the photographer you hire to take
pictures of your artwork.
Google Image Search
Google has a new image search engine that's very accurate in finding out
if any of your images are appearing on other peoples web sites.
There's a good article about it on this web site.
Off topic
The story of the $100 Macy's
gift card |
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June 2011 newsletter |
Life Happened
Early May my wife broke her ankle while we were on the way home from
picking up a new puppy to be Xena's younger brother. She won't be able to
walk without a cast until the end of June, so I had to cancel the three
shows (and attending the NAIA conference) I had scheduled for May. I've
been so busy at home that I haven't had time to send out my newsletter.
I will be at Cain Park and Medina in July and will have my iPad with me to
show artists examples of my imaging work and jury slide photography. I
will also have hand outs of my tips on shooting a better booth picture. If
you're doing those shows, stop by and say hello.
Pictures and video
of our new puppy, Elvis, who's terrorizing Xena.
Pro Panel rental for Three Rivers
It took a year on my web site but my panels were rented for both weeks of
Three Rivers. Last year I put the page up too close to the dates of the
show for the page to bring me the results I wanted.
They are still available for Fair in the Park in September. If you're
doing Howard Alan's Shadyside show, they will arrange for a canopy and
panel rental.
Using an iPad for Standards Review at Art Shows
Summer shows are now going strong. Send me your booth pictures for review
or to fix.
Three Booths
I had an artist at my house setting up their display for me to photograph.
They needed three different booth pictures. One for the regular shows that
they apply to, one for Howard Alan's "B" shows (they want a different booth
picture for their "A" and "B" shows) and the third for applying to higher
end shows. The problem is that they have a great looking colorful booth
that is almost too distinctive. Sorry no pictures without the artist's
permission.
The hoops we have to jump through to earn a living.
2009 Booth Picture not good in 2011
Don't you just hate when that happens.
In June 2009 I shot a booth picture for a mixed media artist. The artist
used the picture for all the shows they applied to from the second half of
2009 until this past winter, where a show they had previously been
accepted to using the same booth picture rejected the application, asking
for a booth picture showing three walls. Yes, the booth picture only
showed two walls, which was fine for booth pictures taken prior to
September 2009 when booth picture requirements changed. And the artist has
large pieces in the booth so it's not like there could be a table with
buy/sell junk in the place of the missing third wall.
So the real issue is why should an artist be required to take new booth
pictures if their style hasn't changed, only the pieces themselves.
Especially since every piece in a display picture is usually sold by the
time artists get to the shows they have applied to.
And I know that some artists are going to say just shoot another booth
picture. Well, for some people that isn't the easiest answer because they
understand their technical limitations and need a really good display
picture.
New page of tips for artists that want to photograph their booth
23 tips on taking a better booth picture |
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April 2011 newsletter |
For the first time in about
four years I'm scheduled to do about a half dozen art shows starting the
first weekend in May. Here's a link to
my art show
schedule page. For the art shows I attend,
I purchased an iPad to show artists a portfolio of my jury slide
photography and examples of what I can do to improve their jury images. I
also signed up with both Intuit GoPayment and the Square to take credit
cards on my iPad while at art shows.
A good day at the post office
I've heard it from other artists for years, a lot of whom I've been able
to help. But now I've experienced it myself. I just received two
acceptances in the mail for shows not using online applications but asking
for digital images. Cain Park and Medina. But up until now, I've received
rejections or wait list for five shows I've applied to on ZAPP or JAS,
with the jury still being out for a few more I haven't heard from yet. Not
that it bothers me because it will be the first shows I've done in about
four years and I don't know how much stamina I will have.
More examples of how important the quality of your jury
images and booth image is. From the Broad Ripple application status e-mail
Overall the jury did not make many comments. They did mark down for
low-quality images, missing booth shots and booth shots that failed to
omit the artist's name. Finally, they tended to mark down applications
that did not show a consistent body of work or match the booth shot.
Jurors' Comments
800 applications
64 applications had comments
35 comments were about the booth
6 comments were about artist name in file name or possibly on images
Besides the recommendations about applying in a more appropriate category,
some of the other comments were:
should be larger to be more effective
work on booth slide
booth shot a bit crowded
take out business name
are the less costly items shown in booth shot?
booth slide differs a lot from work slides, booth slide wildly
different!
don't list names in statement
remove name from booth slide
work on booth slide
do not put self in booth slide
no name in booth slide please
remove name and people from booth shot
remove name from slides
do not use name in statement
booth shows many media
remove name from statement
booth shot does not match detail shots
best to not have people in the booth shot
need a much better booth slide; keep working
do not put self into booth shot
do not put name in title of booth slide
work on better images, need a better booth shot
work on better images
remove names from statement
Digital files, 35mm slides or prints - what to submit for
jurying
when given a choice
Reading the Fine Print
From the Art & Air (the City of Webster Groves) application
"I hereby grant the Fair and Webster Community Arts Foundation
(Foundation) a non-exclusive and royalty-free license to use any jury
image that I have submitted or will in the future submit to the Fair or
Foundation for their promotional, publicity and charitable fundraising
purposes which include expressly, but are not limited to, reproduction on
promotional and publicity materials for the Fair and charitable
fundraising materials (including hats, t-shirts, coffee mugs and similar
items that would be given away in exchange for a donation to the
Foundation) for the Fair and Foundation."
I know artists never read the fine print on the application. I never have
in over 30 years of doing shows. But it's surprising what you're actually
giving away when you do read the application. |
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Feb 2011 newsletter |
has juried Columbus, Cherry Creek, St Louis and more
How often do you create new work?
The impending degrading of the booth image
More on waiting lists
Disney closed their waiting list a month before the show. At that point
they stopped taking people off the wait list. Disney ended up with empty
spaces in their show. I wonder if they understand the concept of what a
waiting list really is.
The age of the jurors
This is about a factor not talked about in the makeup of the jury. It's
been discussed whether they are academics, gallery owners or others in
related fields. But what hasn't been discussed yet is the age of the
jurors and how their decisions change the way the show looks and who
gets accepted.
I was talking to an artist recently who was the oldest of four jurors by
what was probably at least twenty years. Because of the younger age of
the jurors (who did have experience in the art world), the show they
chose was more cutting edge and not at all traditional. A lot of artists
who had previously done the show didn't get back in. Nor did anyone else
that has spent years creating work that was saleable.
I'm not saying that this is a bad thing. But it is another factor that
is potentially forcing older artists out of the shows and could be good
for younger artists doing things differently.
How far will a top show go to fill all the spaces
I got a call the week before the Grove from an artist asking if there
were any spaces available at the Coconut Grove show the following
weekend. I was called because my name and phone number are on the Grove
web site for artists that need help with their images or application. I
explained to the artist that they needed to call the show and I asked if
they were on the waiting list. I was told that they hadn't applied but
had gotten in last year at the last minute without having applied then
either. I don't doubt this because the last time I did the Grove myself
about five years ago, another photographer who hadn't applied walked up
on setup day and got the space next to me.
The 100 character artist statement
The 100 character artist statement works in the favor of the artist who
does less work in the creation of their art work (read that as buy/sell)
than the true artist. The less work artist has fewer points to make in
their statement while the true artist can't create an accurate statement
because there's not enough characters to describe what sets them apart
from their lower quality competition.
Show directors should pay attention to this because you're abusing one
of the best tools a true artist has in differentiating themselves from
buy/sell.
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Jan 2011 newsletter |
Chris Maher and I recently completed a new interview for Shutterbug
Magazine. Chase Jarvis is a new breed of commercial photographer. He's
young, talented, successful and uses the social media sites to promote
himself. He has over 38,000 followers on Facebook and over 56,000
followers on Twitter. It's a good read because he talks about new
business models for generating assignments.
If you like it, click on the link at the top of the page and add the
interview to your Facebook wall.
Columbus open jury Feb 5th and 6th
Even if you haven't applied, this is one of the
best things you can do to help your business. Understanding what the
competition is submitting for jury images enables you to see just how
strong your presentation is.
Something for Everyone or micro managing the art show
application
The following e-mail was sent out by the St Louis Art Fair:
"2011 Saint Louis Art Fair Applicant.
Over the last two years it has been brought to our attention by the
jurors that the work they see during the jury process is different from
what they see on-site at the festival. We tried addressing this last
year when we asked for a booth image from an outdoor show. When the
question about your range of pricing is asked on the application we see
ranges for example $25 - $5000. Yet the submitted images tend to be the
more high priced work. We know it is not feasible to sell only your high
priced work should you be accepted. Therefore we ask that you submit
images that more accurately portray the work the jurors will see in your
booth. This will help alleviate questions about what was actually juried
in the show, our secret shoppers who will be vetting the show, and set
the stage for what the jurors can expect to see at the festival. If you
would like an opportunity to adjust your application please respond to
this email. If you have questions please call."
Mainsail - You're out, no you're in, no you're out
I was forwarded a series of four e-mails from Mainsail that went out on
January 14th within an hour. First e-mail was a rejection letter, then
an acceptance letter than a rejection and finally a second rejection and
apology for the confusion.
Is the Mainsail issue news that the public would be interested in? I
received a call from a reporter for the St Petersburg Times about the
Mainsail show sending out the incorrect e-mails. Anyone who's been doing
art shows for more than a couple of years had a good laugh about it. But
it appears that one artist called the newspaper and tried to embarrass
the show by getting them to write an article about it but not allow them
to use their name, for fear of retaliation by the show. The way it was
explained to me is that when the acceptance was received, they
immediately posted to their Facebook page about getting in, and then had
to retract it, so they decided to take their embarrassment out on the
show.
The reporter told me that this wouldn't have happened ten years ago
because social networking sites didn't exist then. My reaction is this
shouldn't happen now either, people living their lives on the internet,
and if they do, mistakes like this are going to become more common
place.
Reston pulls another non artist friendly move
In 2009, Reston juried the show from the images submitted for jurying
and announced the awards prior to the show at the preview party. For
2011, For $100 per space ($200 for a double) they are offering accepted
artists the ability to choose which block they want to be located on.
This money grab would have never happened when Mary Saunders was
director and Paul Germain, Ginny Herzog and I were the three artist
advisors. I did call the show and, after listening to their explanation,
suggested that there were better ways to word their space location
request. It seems that they needed to generate more money for the art
center because of government cuts in funding to the arts. Since it was
too late to raise the booth fee since it had already been announced,
they felt justified in offering a choice of locations for an additional
fee. Hey, nobody wants to be set up on those windy side streets.
My Thoughts on Wait Lists
Different show handle wait lists differently. Living in Pittsburgh, I
used to look forward to doing Three Rivers every year, but for some
reason I was continually wait listed but never had a year go by where I
didn't do the show. Turns out that when Harriet Mendlowitz passed away,
I found out that that she was keeping a lot of local artists out of the
show and calling them to fill in from the waiting list. Having a
dedicated vehicle for doing shows meant that it was always packed and I
could be at the festival site within fifteen minutes of a phone call.
But smaller local shows are an unknown. There may have been personal
reasons why you weren't accepted or maybe they like to keep artists in
the wings for last minute cancellations.
The last time I applied, Sunfest in W. Palm Beach had a stupid waiting
list policy. They told everyone on the wait list to show up on set up
day to see if there were any open spaces. Though I did really well
there, it wasn't worth the 1200 mile drive each way to see if a space
may open up. Talk about an artist unfriendly attitude.
Top shows on the same weekend as other top shows are usually easy to get
into off the waiting list. For example, a lot of artists apply to both
State College and Madison (and maybe three or four other shows also) the
weekend before Ann Arbor. There's a lot of movement between the two
shows accepted list as artists choose which they would rather do. State
College is four days and Madison only two days but if you live in the
eastern part of the country, the time is the same because of a days
drive and back from Madison.
I feel that you should call every show that you're wait listed for to
find out your status and let them know you're still interested. I've
always called as soon as I got the letter and then every week or so
until right before the show, when I've called daily or let them know I
would be there waiting to set up.
I've gotten into Coconut Grove by sleeping in my truck in front of the
show office overnight the night before the show started. I've gotten
into Port Clinton by sleeping overnight in a folding chair by the table
where the artists check in. I've gotten into Oklahoma City by calling
once a week even though they kept telling me not to call. The last time
they told me not to call, they called me back in ten minutes with a
space.
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Dec 29, 2010 newsletter |
Happy New Year -
our New Years card
Artisphere
jury review
It reinforces the importance of the booth image and includes a
response from the director
How to
photograph your booth
Craigs List / eBay Auto Scam
Here's a new scam I came across while looking for a used minivan on
Pittsburgh Craigs List. I did a search on Craigs List for a Honda
Odyssey to see what's available. I found a 2003 for $2950 and a 2004 for
$3800. In both cases they had only an e-mail address and one had a clear
description including the vin number. So I e-mailed both telling them I
was interested in purchasing it. In both cases I heard back that they were
leaving the country in 48 hours and wanted to sell it right away and one
would set up a private eBay auction and the other a Google invoice. Then I
looked on eBay for the 2003 Odyssey and found the exact same worded
auction and pictures put up by a used car dealer in California that has a
good track record of selling cars on eBay. One call to the car dealer
confirmed my suspicions that the same vehicle was in two different
locations and the Craigs List offer was for the price the vehicle was
initially listed for on eBay to start the bidding. And in both cases they
ignored my offer to pick up the vehicle at the local location it's
supposed to be at and pay cash for it.
I did eventually find a really clean 2002 Honda Odyssey
with only
52,000 miles on cars.com and took a four hour bus trip from
Pittsburgh to Harrisburg to pick it up. I'm now looking for a lightly
used Trimline canopy and mesh walls, or a set of six foot Pro Panels
to purchase or trade for my set of seven foot Pro Panels.
Still have 35mm jury slides you've been considering
having scanned
for jury images or for your web site? I'm still scanning 35mm slides
for artists.
I've put up a
new
gallery of rock stars I photographed in the early 1970's |
|
Nov 8, 2010 newsletter |
Open Juries
Fort Worth open jury November 12
Artisphere open jury November 13
A short video from the open jury is on the
Artisphere web site
Des Moines open jury November 17
Read the
application statistics provided by the Des Moines show.
If you are notified of any other open juries, please let me know.
Walmart mugs from
China that lead you to believe that they are hand
made. Or how about this
iPad
application that lets you create virtual
pottery. Another
Youtube pottery movie; potter at the art fair
Full size ZAPP images on the web
Bayou City (Houston) put up a web gallery that opened the full size ZAPP
(1920 pixel square) images when thumbnails were clicked on. As soon as I
was notified about it, I posted to all the art show forums (power in
numbers) and the accepted artists contacted the show and asked them to
remove the full size images. Within a few hours, the gallery was taken
down and the artists images were safe again. I've proposed to ZAPP that
they a create web gallery template that limits the enlarged images to 500
pixels, but I doubt it will ever materialize. If any artist comes across
an art show web site where the enlarged images are full ZAPP size (or
close to or larger than your monitor) please contact the show and let them
know that they are putting their artists copyright in jeopardy. If the
show in question doesn't respond fast enough try posting about it to a few
of the art show forums to get support from your fellow artists. Earlier
this year someone who worked in the Uptown (Minneapolis) office uploaded
the full size ZAPP images to Flickr where prints could be ordered. When
contacted, the show couldn't do anything until the employee came to work
the next day, twelve hours later. Too long to leave the full size images
on the web where anyone could take them.
Fairhope Art Center Image Requirements - the math
doesn't work
"Digital images should be saved in JPG format, 300 dpi, no more than seven
inches (or 504 pixels) along the image's longest dimension. Problem is
that 300 times 7 equals 2100, not 504. A call to the art center brought
the response of just send them in large enough that we can see them when
projected. My recommendation to both the artists and the show was to ask
for or supply ZAPP images.
What's at the
bottom of your booth
More about how to improve your display image.
A
new form to keep track of shows you apply to
I've started using a program called ProShow Producer
which is the
premiere program used by wedding photographers to create videos from
their photographs for their clients.
Artwork videos I've created
and uploaded to Youtube |
|
Sept 28, 2010 newsletter |
Rent display equipment from
fellow artists
I'm going to be setting up a web site that lists display equipment for
sale or rental to help artists getting started. I started advertising
renting my ProPanels on my web site and was able to earn $100 by renting a
half dozen panels for a museum show for a weekend a few weeks ago. It's
not necessarily for panels for 2D work. If you're a 3D artist and only do
a few shows or have an older display, consider renting (or loaning) it to
local artists who may have gotten into a show but don't have the display
equipment yet. The web site will be
http://ArtShowDisplay.com
Currently it's pointing to a page on one of my web sites that does have
some display equipment for rent.ZAPP Conference
and Art Student program in St Louis
There were a few artists there. All the discussions were interesting this
year as compared to last years snoozers, at least from an artist
perspective.
There was an interesting discussion about the future of
art fairs but I did one on one consultations in the lobby for most of the
morning so I missed most of it. I think ZAPP had the audio recorded for
most of the conference and I think that would be interesting if they make
it available.
They projected the images at lunch on Tuesday but the
artists that contributed to the projection thought that their images would
be critiqued but there was no provision for that. Next year's conference
should probably have an entire day for images and include a mock jury.
Also, three hours is too short a time for both Bruce and myself. We each
could have easily used up three hours.
The key note speaker was from Sotheby's and spoke about
the difference between selling from a gallery vs. selling direct like we
do at art shows. Larry Oliverson and Shary Brown spoke about the art show
he did in Japan. The Japanese visited Ann Arbor and invited a number of
artists. They arranged for transportation of the artwork and gave them a
place to stay.
I hope ZAPP figures out that they need to charge the
artists much less than what they charge show directors and staff if they
want artists at their next conference.
The highlight of the weekend for me was the educational
program that Les Slesnick put together for local art students. Instead of
just having them do the physical work for artists, they were introduced to
the entire concept of art shows. He asked me do a 90 minute presentation
on what makes good and bad jury slides.
Open jury Ft Myers
From a
post on the ArtFair Insiders blog.
September 30th starting about 9:00AM you can see the jury live in a video
feed on the Fort Myers web site and if you're in South Florida, you can
see the images projected on September 29th between 1:00 and 3:00. Prior
arrangements need to be made so e-mail the show for more information.
http://artfestfortmyers.com
If you hear of any other open juries, please let me know as early as
possible so I can notify artists.
Not at an Art
Show
A good example of why you shouldn't shoot your booth picture at an art
show.
The Shadow Knows
Images of artwork dropped into backgrounds with shadows that look as if it
were photographed that way, or should have been photographed that way.
|
|
August 9, 2010 newsletter |
The Repairman
How much do you know about the people who enjoy walking art shows and
buying your art? A few months ago we had a repairman come to fix our
dishwasher. I photographed him for my visitors project and sent him a
print. Then one day we came home and there was a note on the door from the
repairman, wanting me to come to his house and photograph his flowers.
Under the Canopy
An article with example images of how to photograph large or difficult to
photograph artwork using your canopy as a diffused soft light source.
Art
Presentations
Some tips on preparing images of your art for slide shows, print portfolio
and maybe a short video of you creating a piece for your web site or
YouTube.
From
Passion to Survival
A look back over the past thirty years of doing art shows:
I've started shooting color infrared again.
The new gallery is on
AlternatePhoto. |
|
June 3, 2010 newsletter |
4x6 isn't 1920
Another jury slide
photographer doesn't understand cropping or color space.
Supporting local art shows
For the first time this year I'm sponsoring an award worth $250 of my
services (either photography, image prep or booth photos} for each week of
the Three Rivers Arts Festival. And if you're in town for Three Rivers, I
can shoot your artwork at anytime during the show, even in the morning
prior to the show opening. Just give me a call 412-401-8100 to make
arrangements to come to my home studio.
Pro
Panels for Rent in Pittsburgh
I'm still scratching my head over this one.
57th Street - information on ZAPP
Jury Procedure
A maximum of 250 artists will exhibit at the 2010 event. Each year, one
quarter of the artists exhibiting in the previous year's 57th Street Art
Fair is asked to participate in the jury process. For the 2010 fair,
artists exhibiting in the following media will be re-screened: Ceramics,
Fiber and Paper. Potentially 75 new exhibit
slots in all categories will be determined through the competitive jury
process. Artists who exhibited in all other categories in the 2009 fair
are invited to participate in the 2010 fair.
Between The Thirsty Whale and Cheeseburger in Paradise
restaurants
Attached you will find the 2nd Annual Algonquin Commons Juried Art Fair
application. This year all the artists will be located in an area of the
center visible from Randall Road, located between The Thirsty Whale and
Cheeseburger in Paradise restaurants. No city or state listed and a Google
search was necessary if you hadn't heard of the location.
20,000 affluent fans - from Howard Alan's newsletter
The 3rd District Art Annual...Downtown Kansas City Art Fair
June 25, 26, & 27, 2010
On the Saturday night of this great show Michael Buble will be headlining
a concert onsite bringing with him over 20,000 of his affluent fans right
to the show. This is great news for this already busy event. The show will
be the official Michael Buble pre event attracting not only concert goers
but additional traffic to the area. We hope you are as excited to hear
this news as we are to give it. This three day event has steadily become
one of our most popular summer events and this great addition is giving it
a huge push. Read below for additional event and application information!
Art Auctions
My feelings on auctioning art
and why there should be a shared reward.
Inexpensive banners for your
booth in under 24 hours
Both Sam's Club and Costco offer 20x30 inkjet prints for only $9. I've
created a page of tips for using their inexpensive prints for banners for
your booth. I'm also working with Frame Destination on an inexpensive way
to display the banners in your booth. Pictures will be up on the article
page by Monday June 7th
Would Picasso be accepted to Cherry Creek?
In 1979 someone submitted a script of one of Jerzy Kosinski's best selling
books to fourteen publishers and twenty-six literary agents under a
pseudonym, all of whom rejected it. What do you think would happen if
someone sent a set of Picasso images to some of the top shows? Would it
get past the jury? Would the booth image keep them out? Just food for
thought.
Charitable Giving
Posted by Sarah Pollock to the Artfair Sourcebook forum
So there I was, looking at my business credit card account online and I
noticed a recent ZAPP jury fee charge for a "long shot" show to which I
faithfully apply each year, and each year get rejected. The credit card's
automated online system had this particular expense categorized as
"Charitable Giving."
Slideroom.com - another jury system
Please contact them and ask that
they don't crop vertical images |
|
April 8, 2010 newsletter |
Visitors to my House
I've posted about this before. I photograph everyone who comes to my house
with something they brought. I'm looking for artists who do shows in
Pittsburgh or drive through Pittsburgh on the way to a show and invite
everyone to stop at my house to have their picture taken.
You
can see the gallery here. A lot of the pictures in the gallery are
artists who have brought their work for me to photograph.
Continuing the ZAPP Image Formatting Issue
I've been told that there will be another change of wording on the image
formatting page of the ZAPP web site. And they intend to show a set of
images letting you see what happens if you upload smaller images and how
they will project compared to artists who upload 1920 pixel images. I
still don't understand how they can let artists upload smaller images that
put them in jeopardy in the jury room. This could have never happened with
35mm slides.
Bayou City Wait List
In a promotional partnership with a local radio station, the Bayou City
show allowed the public to vote from ten wait list artists to fill a
single space at the show. You could see the names and all five images of
each artist up for selection. Additionally the images could be enlarged. I
did a screen capture
so you could see the unorthodox method of jurying first hand. My page is
one large image file so you may have to wait for it to open and it may
require scrolling to see the width. Some interesting statistics you'll
see. From the ten artists, one had non square images which might have been
smaller, one had white borders and two filled the frame with full square
content.
Color Space and ZAPP Sizing Issue
Six years into the ZAPP system and there's still some photographers that
don't get it. Within a few days of each other, I received two sets of
images taken by the same photographer. One had the wrong color space and
the other had square images that were 1856x1856 pixels. I won't name
photographers in writing but if anyone calls....
Indoor Booth into an Outdoor Booth
Indoor booth into an outdoor booth images
Last month I showed an
HDR booth
example. This month I'm showing how I was able to drop an indoor
booth shot into a canopy so that it's now an outdoor booth image.
Interview
with an ACC juror
who discusses recent trends, which won't come as a surprise to anyone who
has done Baltimore in the past two years: |
|
March 15, 2010 newsletter |
Continuing the ZAPP Image
Formatting Issue
I came up with a solution and ran it by ZAPP. What they need to do is run
a script on all the images in the system, resizing everything
smaller up to 1920 pixels. Otherwise shows that project the images are
going to continue seeing unequal size images jurying unfairly. It's
actually the same script I use on my
Jury Images web
site when images are uploaded and formatted for ZAPP. By the way, I've
made it entirely free for people who don't know how to format their images
but think that they don't need them post processed.
The HDR Booth
HDR
booth images
HDR stands for high dynamic range and it's a way of combining images taken
at different exposures so as to keep detail in the shadow and highlight
areas. That means the resulting picture is more what the human eye sees.
Computer Crashed but not Forgotten
Read the
article here
Right in the middle of shooting a set of images and editing them for a
jeweler, everything went blank. |
|
Jan 18, 2010 newsletter |
Changing your e-mail address
If you've changed your e-mail address, make sure your auto reply has your
real name and old e-mail address that you're no longer using. Otherwise,
when I send out my newsletter, I get these change of address replies and
have no clue who they are from. So if you've changed your e-mail address
you may not be reading this.
Columbus Open Jury February 6 - 7 in Upper Arlington
Call the show office for times. 614-224-2606. Last year they were able to
give approximate times each medium was to be juried.
ACC Baltimore
I'll be hosting a discussion on digital photography as part of a series of
round table discussions on February 24th at 8:15AM. I will be there all
day on February 23rd and will do booth photographs for any artists that
need them. Unfortunately I think it's during the wholesale days and not
during the retail days. Last year I did some booth pictures and they came
out really well. Let me know in advance if you need a booth photograph
taken.
Copyright infringement notification
Most artists and photographers know who owns the copyright of all the
images on their web site because it's their own work. But my web site has
more than just galleries of my own photography. I also have a series of
interviews with famous photographers and a few other interviews with
people in photography related fields. In December I received a FedEx
letter from the Masterfile stock agency (and an invoice for over $6,000) about an image
on my web site. An interesting story that worked out well in the end.
1960x1960
I've started receiving calls about the Boston Mills application. They
still don't want to use ZAPP. Where are the artists advisors when you need
them. "Minimum long pixel dimension of 980 but it's recommended that you
make your images 1960x1960 because that's what other show applications are
requesting." Well, at least you don't have to purchase a ski lift pass to
submit your application this year.
The "new" ZAPP image size
All artists need to
read this article before uploading images into the ZAPP system
that will put them at a disadvantage: Make sure to tell all your artist
friends. |
|
Dec 27, 2009 newsletter |
Cherry Creek Jury Review
My trip to Denver was planned around my being able to spend the afternoon
observing the Cherry Creek
2010 jury.
Consulting with ZAPP follow up
I created a PowerPoint presentation from the issues on my list. We spent
over two hours going over the issues with my logically defending all my
requests. For all the web site issues, I created before and after screen
captured images where I added what was needed in Photoshop to prove my
points. Look for a major upgrade to the ZAPP system coming next summer.
Hopefully they'll keep their word and have me consult on the new system
starting in January.
Social Networking
During some "free" time over Christmas, I signed up with Facebook,
Linkedin and Twitter. I still don't really get it so I may make some
mistakes along the way. |
|
Dec 14, 2009 newsletter |
Tips from Bruce Baker
My latest interview is with Bruce
Baker who shares some jury and marketing observations. Bruce is
considered the guru of the 3D art and fine craft world. I highly recommend
his consulting services for artists.Consulting
with ZAPP
Westaf (ZAPP) is having me visit their offices this week to consult with
them. I've spent weeks preparing a multi page document of suggestions on
how things can be improved on the ZAPP web site and in the system.
Everything on my list comes from my personal experience applying to shows
myself and working with many of you to upload images and help you through
the application process. Here's an outline of some of what I intend to
discuss with them.
| Identifying shows - all shows should have the city
and state in parenthesis after their name on the ZAPP web site
|
| Sorting shows to apply to - only shows still taking
applications should be listed |
| Applying to shows - applications should be able to be
tweaked until the deadline |
| Shows should list number of completed applications
they've gotten |
| Shows should list number of spaces you are jurying
for |
| Artist statement should be at least 250 characters
|
| Server crashes - deadlines should automatically be
extended 24 hours |
| My ZAPPlication page - check box to archive all
applications with a single click |
| Contacting ZAPP - phone number (888-562-7232) clearly
listed on the web site |
| Open (or video feed) juries - All artists should be
notified in advance |
| Feedback from shows you've applied to |
| Order of images presented to the juries - should
always be by application submission date and time |
| Increase the number of images allowed in your profile
to 100 |
| Signatures on artwork - artwork images shouldn't be
looked at through a magnifying glass to look for identification, only
technique. |
The "new" ZAPP image size
I've been asked to not call attention to this but it's causing problems
for artists. In August ZAPP started to allow 1400 pixel images without
black borders to be uploaded. They originally had the new wording on
everyone's image upload page but removed it within 48 hours at my request
because it was confusing.
Because of the misleading wording on the image prep
instruction page of the web site, it made artists think that removing the
black borders would make their images more uniform. The wording from the
image preparation page of the ZAPP web site is as follows; "Removing the
black masks from your current images, while not required, will create a
cleaner look when images are viewed by jurors."
That is absolute nonsense. The jurors never saw the
black borders because they viewed the jury images on a black page
background. I get up to ten calls or e-mails a day asking about it and
explain the misleading information. And if you apply to a show using
projectors,
ZAPP will add black borders (changing and resaving your
JPEGs) to square your images so they can project properly. I've even
called a number of other jury slide photographers and explained why
changing the format they prepare for their clients will cost them in the
future.
Please do not even think about removing the black
borders from your images. They will always present the best when prepared
in the original ZAPP 1920x1920 format. Staying with the original format
will also allow you to use those images for most of the non ZAPP shows
asking for digital images. In fact, most shows asking for digital images
consider the ZAPP format to be the standard. Just like 35mm slides that
when rotated keep the horizontal and vertical opening exactly the same.
The original ZAPP 1920x1920 format displays horizontals and verticals
exactly the same size. If the square format goes away, horizontal jury
images will have a significant advantage because the width of a monitor is
much greater than the height and getting even more so as wide screen
becomes the norm in new monitors. |
|
Nov 9, 2009 newsletter |
An extremely insightful
conversation with Chris Coffey, juror for 2009
Columbus, Long's Park and Boston Mills. Chris goes into a lot of detail
about why he thinks the booth slide is the weakest slide and things you
can do to improve it both for jurying and when you set up at a show.
ArtiGras 2010 Open ZAPP Jury
First posted to Connie Metler's Art Fair Insider's Forum
Sherry Wilson offers insight into what the
jewelry category projection
looked like
The New Booth Slide Requirement
It's time for everyone to start reading the details, especially if you've
been taking applications for granted over the years. I created an account
with the Belleville show to read their image requirements to help an
artist apply. Their new booth image requirements are long and detailed.
Could this be the future? Shows defining the booth slide so clearly that
artists will need a few different booth slides. The upper case is actually
copied from their prospectus.
EVERYTHING THAT IS VISIBLE IN YOUR BOOTH FROM THE FRONT OF THE BOOTH AT
THE FAIR MUST BE SEEN IN THE BOOTH SLIDE. YOUR ENTIRE BOOTH, FROM CORNER
TO CORNER, MUST BE VISIBLE TO THE JURY. Chairs and other types of seating
are the only exception.
BROWSE BOXES, FLIP BINS, CASH CARTS, AND THE LIKE MUST APPEAR IN THE BOOTH
SLIDE SHOULD THEY BE VISIBLE FROM THE FRONT OF THE BOOTH AT THE FAIR.
The booth submitted in your booth slide must be EQUIVALENT to the booth
you intend to use at our fair. Setups typically intended for indoor use
are generally not appropriate for outdoor venues. ALL BOOTHS AND
INSTALLATIONS MUST BE REASONABLY ABLE TO WITHSTAND INCLEMENT WEATHER, this
must include adequate weights at all four corners.
THE ENTIRE BOOTH MUST BE SEEN BY THE JURY. SHOWING ONLY ONE CORNER OR JUST
TWO PANELS OF A THREE-PANEL BOOTH IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. The jury must see the
entire space from corner to corner.
ALL WORK TO BE SHOWN AT THE FAIR MUST BE REPRESENTATIVE OF WORK SHOWN IN
THE BOOTH SLIDE. Work not representative of the juried work appearing in
the booth slide will not be permitted at the fair.
PANEL RISERS OR EXTENDERS THAT INCREASE WALL HEIGHT AND/OR EXTRA PANELS
THAT EXTEND LATERALLY BEYOND THE LIMITS OF THE SPACE WILL NOT BE PERMITTED
AT THE FAIR nor will infringement on a neighboring artist's space or
public spaces. Attachment of any kind, the primary intent of which is to
attract attention, must be approved by the Standards and Compliance
committee, or be removed..
When approached about the new booth slide regulations, Belleville stated
that they would relax them for this year knowing that it's too difficult
for artists to reshoot their booth now that the outdoor season is over but
they would by in place next year.
From the Bayou City Booth Slide Description
"The amount of inventory that you intend to display or otherwise present
at the show must be clearly evident in the booth slide, and within a
margin of variation of approximately 20%. For example: If you jury with
five framed pieces, then we expect that only five or six framed pieces
will be hung in your booth at any one time for the duration of the show.
The use of panel risers or extenders to increase height is not permitted,
unless your booth slide at jury has included them. The use of "appendages"
i.e., extra display panels that do not appear in your booth slide at jury
and those which encroach upon public and/or artists' spaces, will not be
permitted. The only signages permitted at the show without prior approval
are: The booth/artist identification sign provided by the festival;
artist's statement provided by the festival; and price and title tags.
Artists whose names and/or studio names are permanently affixed to the
tent or booth must obtain prior approval immediately upon acceptance.
Unacceptable signage includes, but is not limited to, magazine and/or
newspaper articles; banners of any type; ribbons or other documentation of
past accolades and/or awards.
Exceptions to any of the above may be requested after acceptance of
invitation. All exceptions must be in place at least 30 days prior to the
festival and will be documented by festival staff with approval by the
Festival Director."
When asked about the new regulations, the Bayou City director stated that
it bothers her to see one booth sticking up 5' higher than the others.
Out of touch with reality show rules
Springfield Illinois Old Capitol Art Fair has these antiquated rules for
photography and digital.
"Photography should be processed by the artist. Acceptance or rejection of
commercially processed photography is at the discretion of the jury
committee whose decision is final. Inkjet/giclees are allowed only under
the digital artwork category and must be high-quality limited editions
produced on archival stock."
The (not so) funny part of this is that to print your own photography
means using an inkjet printer and non inkjet photographs are printed using
commercial printers. |
|
Oct 11, 2009 newsletter |
The mock jury at Peoria was a
success. I projected the images, and with the help of Les Slesnick and
everyone else in the room, we spent the time analyzing and critiquing the
images of all the artists who wanted to participate. I can't begin to
stress how important it is for artists to see their images, as well as
their competitor's images projected. Every time I project images for a
group of artists, everyone learns from the experience. In fact, one artist
whose booth slide was critiqued, made changes in their display over the
weekend and photographed it again from a different camera angle. On Monday
morning when they e-mailed me the new images, I was able to improve their
booth image based on the suggestion given at the mock jury.
Olympics warns man about sharing photos on website
A story about a man who posted pictures from his trip to China to see the
Olympics in his Flickr account with a creative commons license that
allowed anyone to do as they wished with them, and an image was used
commercially in England. The back of the purchased ticket does not say no
photography, just no commercial use of the photographs taken.
So how does this effect artists who do art shows. There
have been many threads and discussions about how people come into a booth
with their camera and the justified paranoia on the part of the artist on
whether their designs or artwork will be outright copied. But what if some
of those pictures are put into Flickr accounts with a license that gives
someone the rights to use the image of your artwork commercially. A model
release would be necessary for any identifiable people in the image but
what about photographs of your art?
And what's worse than the person who posted the images
against the rights specified on the back of the purchased ticket was the
comments from the multitude of idiots who think that just because they
take a picture, they have complete freedom to do as they wish with it.
I've even had an argument with someone who wanted to purchase a print of
one of my sports photographs and then reproduce it to sell posters. I
tried to explain the difference between purchasing a a fine art print to
hang on the wall and having to get a signed release from the basketball
player before actually licensing the image from me for commercial use. In
the end he still didn't get it, literally. Because I refused to sell him a
print.
Anyone ever check Flickr to see if there are photographs
taken at any art shows with a creative commons license for others to use
the content commercially?
This could be a good follow up to Diane French's
presentation at the NAIA conference where she discovered that a painting
she had sold years ago was photographed and used to promote an art show
she had never applied to. And they even went as far as to use it on the
t-shirts and posters.
Stories like these make you wonder if people actually
understand and respect what we do. They know we make the art, but do they
actually understand that it's our intellectual property. |
|
Sept 8, 2009 newsletter |
Updated information on ZAPP
Projection Jurying
It includes a list of shows using digital projectors to view the images. I
suggest contacting the shows doing projection jurying and ask if they are
having an open jury, or at least allow artists a chance to see the images
projected the day or evening before the jury. If you know if any other
shows using projectors or having an open jury, please
let me know so I can update
the information.
Photography too light.
I received images from an artist that were substantially lighter than they
should have been. The photographs were taken by the same professional
photographer that the artist had used the previous year. When I spoke to
the photographer, I asked if he had compared this years images to last
years. I was told that he doesn't save the files, and that it's only copy
work anyway. So I put up an example web page comparing last years images
and this years. He acknowledges that the image from this year comes across
much lighter. But he also said that he checked the histogram (graph of the
exposure) for both and they both had the correct exposure. This is where
the brainless (photographer) camera comes into play. It never occurred to
him that the camera doesn't take pictures, the photographer does. And
though camera equipment has gotten more sophisticated, it still requires a
brain to compose and choose what the correct exposure is for a particular
subject. His verbal response to me was; "All I can do is what my equipment
tells me to do." All I can say is he's just a amateur with a very
expensive point and shoot camera calling himself a professional.
Traveling in England - Wallet Stolen - Send Money
I recently received an e-mail from an artist that contained something
similar to the above message. Inadvertently the artist had clicked on a
link in a fraudulent e-mail to log into their hotmail account and the
account was immediately hijacked (password changed) and that message sent
out to all the names in the address book.
NEVER click on a link in an e-mail that supposedly takes you to any
account you need to log into with a username and password. That includes
bank accounts, e-mail services, eBay, PayPal and any web site
you may have purchased things from. If you have any question about the
validity of the message. Shut down your e-mail program and log into the
account the same way you always do, and consider changing your password
just to be sure.
Did I mention that the artist had to cancel all credit cards because
without access to the e-mail account, the artist didn't know what
sensitive information the e-mails might have contained. |
|
July 18, 2009 newsletter |
Manayunk Art Show favors
sponsors over artists
When will they learn that the public doesn't attend an art show because
businesses with bull horns stand in the street and hawk their products.
There was a recent review of the show posted to one of the art show
forums. Here's a condensed version:
"I Just did the Manayunk Art Festival in Philadelphia. NO MORE. Crowds
were huge, that is the only positive point. Everything else was negative.
The Manayunk Development Corp. which runs this show has probably given
space to every sponsor who applied. So, every 6th-8th booth on each side
of the road was a sponsor booth. They created a major distraction by being
loud and noisy, and at least one using a bullhorn to hawk their products.
The same problem with the food. Every 10th booth was either a food booth
or one of the restaurants that expanded into the show perimeter. Again,
this is where most of the money went from visitors. They also created
noise and played loud music. It was reported that when one of the artists
complained to the show staff about the sponsor using a loud bullhorn, they
were told that the show wouldn't do anything about it. In addition to all
this, young kids vandalized a few booths at night and broke some windows
of a few shops. Music was very loud, coming from all direction, which was
extremely annoying. There were at least 70 low end flea market type
jewelry booths, about 25% of all exhibitors. So, Manayunk is no longer an
art festival. It's a food plus sponsor plus music festival."
A little personal perspective here. I used to do the
Manayunk show. Of all the shows I've done, it was the only show where I
could hang the outside wall of my booth with my
1970's basketball photos
and feel like I fit right in.
On the positive side of the art show news
This year the Three Rivers Arts Festival in Pittsburgh (my local show)
changed the length from three weeks to two weeks this year for the first
time. I walked the show both weeks and spoke to over a hundred artists.
Most artists said that they were doing well. An additional layout change
was to move the Friday, Saturday, Sunday spaces down to the point and they
turned the food booths around to face the forty booth spaces that were
located there. Everyone's first impression was that the spaces wouldn't
work do to the separation from the rest of the show in Gateway Center on
the other side of the Hilton. But it turned out that most of the artists
in the new location did well there and some first weekend artists even
requested to come back for the second weekend if space became available
due to cancellations. It's exciting to see that kind of change in an arts
festival that's been around so long. I hope they keep the length of the
show to two weeks from now on. |
|
June 22, 2009 newsletter |
Art Show charging $100 over
the booth fee to let artists in off the waiting list
On one of the art show forums, an artist told of being called off the
waiting list for the Virginia Highlands show in Atlanta and being offered
a space for $100 more than the original booth fee.
When are images of art worth more than the art itself
Reston juried for awards using the images uploaded to JAS months before
the show. They had a preview party the night before the show and featured
the award winners.
Great video of a photographer setting up his booth
Josh Trefethen set his camera to capture one frame every 15 seconds for
the three hours it took to set his display up at a show in Texas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIlOLjBUnZw
Summer booth slide opportunities
Now that the summer shows have started, a lot of artists have been sending
me their booth slide to tweak. If you're going to shoot a booth slide at a
show, please set it up for the booth slide and take the photograph before
setting it up to sell. Take down your name banner and pricing cards. There
can be no identification in the booth. Make sure there are no people in
the picture. Roll down the sides of your canopy so nothing distracting can
be seen through the booth. Be careful of streaks of harsh sunlight.
Overcast or cloudy is better. Don't forget to use a tripod and
make sure to set your camera properly:
Shoot slightly wider than your booth if you're sending
me the images to work on and let me do the cropping and squaring up of the
booth sides in Photoshop. If you're having a problem with reflections, I
have the ability to change the work in the frames in a 2D booth if you
provide properly taken images of the individual pieces.
Throwing Away Art
I've been cleaning out my garage and throwing away older photographs going
back 20 years. There's even a humorous photograph of my dumpster
overflowing with old photographs and frames. |
|
Mar 24, 2009 newsletter |
Improved Booth Slide
I've worked with dozens of artists helping them improve their product
photography or walking them through taking a better booth slide. With the
permission of the artist, I've
put up a web page with a before and after example.
Brookside 2009
Juror Interview
With ZAPP's new monitor jury format, even projection juries are clicking
to enlarge the thumbnails they see on the laptops they use for scoring
because that's the only way to read the individual artwork descriptions.
And the words are very important.
Juror's Bias Possibly Influencing Other Jurors
You'll read in the Brookside article about how a juror pointed out the
some of the photography might have been purchased from a stock agency. I
used this as a basis for a thread on a few different art show forums about
how one jurors comments can influence other jurors.
Adding over 40 images to a ZAPP Profile
ZAPP profiles have a limit of 40 images and if you're like most artists,
you're rapidly reaching that limit or already there. The way to reduce the
number of images is to "archive" all the shows you've applied to that are
completed and that frees up the images that were used for those
applications to be modified or removed. But in rare cases, you may need to
upload an additional image when you already have 40 images in your profile
but have found that the upload image button is no longer there. I've
discovered two ways to add over 40 images to a ZAPP profile. The first way
is to start with 39 or fewer images. Then after uploading each additional
image use your browser's back button to return to the upload image page
where you browse for the image. The second way is to choose an image that
can be modified, then without doing anything to that image, click on the
"modify image" button and then when the page of information opens up,
click on the "modify image" button at the bottom of the page. That brings
you to the completed page for that image and gives you back your "upload
image" button at the top. Of course, none of this is necessary if I work
on your images because I do the uploading also.
ZAPP does the right thing. Couture Jewelry Awards 2008
Hopefully it will balance some of that negativity we hear about ZAPP. This
was forwarded to me by a jeweler who had applied to the Couture Jewelry
Awards 2008 show, which never happened.
From: Lara Turner I am writing to you because you used
the ZAPP™ system to apply to the 2008 "Couture Jewelry Awards" show.
Unfortunately, we have learned from some of you that the event did not
take place. Subsequently, we have not been able to contact, or even
locate, the event administrator. In five years of operation serving
hundreds of events, this is the first and only time we have experienced
this kind of problem. Though ZAPP™ is not liable for the fees submitted to
this now apparently canceled show (we sent the show your application fees
that were collected through ZAPP™ long ago), ZAPP™ will refund id in full
the application fee of each artist. This refund will be credited to your
credit card in the next 30 days. This refund is being made because the
ZAPP™ staff, the ZAPP™ Artist Advisory Committee and th the ZAPP™
Oversight Committee all believe that, in a situation such as this, if at
all possible, artists should not be asked to carry the financial burden
for the failure of a show. With today's economy providing major challenges
to artists, now especially is not the time to hinder artists in any way.
In the future, we will continue to work to limit the possibility for this
kind of situation. Our hope is that this one time will be the only time we
have this experience. Thank you for your patience. If you have questions
about this refund, please contact the ZAPP™ team and one of us will be
happy to respond to your questions. Lara Turner, Manager for ZAPP™ |
|
Feb 28, 2009 newsletter |
No Cancellation Refund from Under the Oaks
An artist had to cancel the Under the Oaks show due to double booking that
weekend. According the Art Fair Source Book, there was a refund deadline
of January 30th which he cancelled by. But the artist was told that though
they are sorry he cannot make it to the show, he will not receive a refund
of his booth fee. The contract signed on the application and also in the
body of the application rules states that once juried and accepted, the
booth fee will not be refunded because of cancellations or inclement
weather despite what the Art Fair Sourcebook says. So how many shows have
arcane refund/cancellation policies, and how many artists give them money
each year? It also makes you appreciate how with ZAPP you don't have to
pay for a booth until accepted.
Trust your own judgment
An artist gets a telephone call from a show director who's logged into the
artist's Juried Art Services profile changing the images used for the
show's application. The show director tells the artist that the new images
work better as a cohesive grouping and recommends leaving the order though
telling the artist that they are free to change the images back to the
original chosen grouping. Because the artist trusts the show director who
even runs "boot camps" for artists, the application was submitted with the
changed images and the result was, drum roll please, rejection. In all
fairness, I spoke to Paul Fisher about the incident and was told that
because of the JAS computer crash, show directors were allowed access to
artist profiles to check for incomplete applications. This can be related
to being at a show and having the director of another show come by and ask
you to apply because they love your work. The usual response is that I've
applied to your show multiple times and have never been accepted.
Are shows getting their application numbers or are
artists getting smarter
Besides the shows that extend their deadlines, there are now some shows
that have extended their deadlines a second time. I still recommend
calling shows a week (or few days) before to see if there are any empty
spaces they want to fill.
I'm constantly surprised how often artists ignore what
could be the most important thing they can do to improve their ability to
get into shows, attend an open jury to see what theirs and their
competitor's images look like when projected. I attended the Columbus open
jury on February 7-8 and saw fewer than a dozen artists during the two
days. Enough lecturing. I sat there for two day taking notes and compiling
tips for this article:
Columbus Open Jury Review and Image Tips
Interview with artist/juror Les Slesnick
Limited Editions nonsense
Springfield Old Capitol suggests (not requires) that printmakers and
photographers limit their editions to 15 or less. It reinforces that each
art show is an entity onto itself with no recognition that artists do
shows other than theirs, or actually do this for a living.
Excerpt from the December 05, 2007 Tucson Citizen
Newspaper
If you notice a lot of new faces at the Fourth Avenue Street Fair, you can
thank the Computer Age. The Fourth Avenue Merchants Association went to an
online application process for the first time for this weekend's fair -
the 38th annual - which resulted in some 85 new artists. "We have about
356 artists in the show. Twenty-four percent of those artists have never
shown in our show before," said Kurt Tallis, marketing and events director
with the merchants' association. By comparison, Tempe's Festival of the
Arts last weekend, which also used Zapplication for the first time, went
with 70 percent new artists, said Kate Hastings, vice president of
marketing and business development with Downtown Tempe Community Inc. For
the 2007 Winter Street Fair here, 576 artists applied, compared to 360
last year, Tallis said.
If the link is still available
Sometimes even the best get confused
For years Uptown has been previewing the images upon submission and
zooming in to see if there is a signature on the art work. If they can see
what they think is an artist name, they set your application back to
incomplete and notify you to remove your name from the images. This
usually happens with paintings, but has also happened with work in other
mediums, especially if the artist has a branding logo anywhere on the
work. This has become a hardship for artists not especially skilled in
Photoshop or those who have hired someone like me to work on their images.
In fact, each year I have to remove signatures from paintings for at least
a half dozen artists. I now automatically take signatures off artwork as
I've always done with booth slides. You'd think that there would be
notification sent out by ZAPP at the show's request prior to the show
taking applications. Or why not accept the same images that all the other
ZAPP shows do.
Old Town Jury
All jurors had new MAC laptops with the resolution set so low that they
had to scroll to see the bottoms of the images. Well, at least all the
jurors were in the same room, and they don't have a midnight New Years Eve
closing date anymore.
Do we really need another Ann Arbor show
I first read about it in the Michigan Guild newsletter and then saw a
thread on my own photography forum about it. Seems that with the ailing
economy in the Detroit area, someone thinks that another Ann Arbor art
show is a smart idea. Someone intends on putting on a show in the
Briarwood Mall parking lot. For those of you who have never done Ann
Arbor, over 30,000 people park there to ride the shuttle buses to the Ann
Arbor shows over the four day period. Ann Arbor is already filled with
thousands of squatter spaces in every nook and cranny you can fit a 10x10
canopy in. One of the reasons posted to my forum was to give artists who
couldn't get into the real shows a chance. The problem with that logic is
that some of the shows are actually reducing the amount of spaces. The
State Street show has fire lane changes that may reduce the number of
booths, the Original show is reducing their spaces from 174 to 137, and
the Guild reduced their number of spaces on State Street a few years ago
by going to 10x10's where they used to have 6x10's. What comes next,
setting up on the interstate in the hopes that someone will get a flat
tire and pull over and purchase a work of art?
Artful Home
Artful Home no longer wants to do the image prep in house. If you need
your images prepared to submit to Artful Home, tell me when you send me
stuff to work on and I can provide their required format in it's own
folder on your CD, or even e-mail the images to Artful Home for you. Same
goes with images I've previously worked on. |
|
Jan 25th, 2009 Newsletter |
State Street Ann Arbor and
Arts, Beats and Eats, Peoria
The State Street Area show is now doing digital jurying with a
deadline of March 1st. They've joined the Michigan Guild and the South
University show using Juried Art Services, as has Arts, Beats and Eats
with an April 7th deadline and Peoria with a March 18th deadline. Do you
have a JAS profile or want to know how they jurors see the images. With
more and more shows using Juried Art Services, everyone should have a
profile.
Here's a link to my JAS simulation.Juried
Art Services crash
Speaking of JAS, they had a five day outage from Jan 12 - 17 due to an
overload of last minute applications to the twelve Amy Amdur shows. The
deadline for those shows has now been extended until Jan 28th with no late
fees. If you've applied to any Juried Art Services shows or even uploaded
images since December 24th, you will have to upload images and complete
your applications again. And if I've uploaded any images for you, please
let me know so I can upload those images again - at no additional charge.
Here's an excerpt from their next press release:
"On January 12th Juried Art Services experienced a server
crash. All systems have been restored but some data was lost. We have
taken the necessary actions to prevent this kind of occurrence in the
future. We have now brought a new server system online to ensure future
security. We have switched hosting companies, upgraded our services, added
load balancing services to address both traffic fluctuations and hardware
failures and now have an offsite backup server in place."
Three Rivers in Pittsburgh
Three Rivers is using ZAPP for the first time this year. But what's really
interesting is that they've reduced the number of days of the show from
seventeen to ten. Between the full and weekend sections, they've gone from
six periods down to four and have probably reduced the number of available
spaces by about a third. I predict tighter jurying and a higher quality
show.
Art Show Application rights grab or just poor wording
From the Raleigh Artsplosure application. "All CDs submitted will become
the property of the producer and will not be returned." Now I don't care
that they don't return the CDs and would expect them to be shredded, but
they should never become the property of whoever "the producers" are. I
wonder if they ran their application wording by a lawyer before printing
it. Photographers run from photo contests that use similar wording. What
could be better wording is that images submitted by accepted artists may
be used to promote the show. I called the show and addressed the issue and
was told that the show would never attempt to violate artists copyright
and they only use images of accepted artists to advertise the show. The
wording was a result of them not wanting to go through the hassle of
returning the CDs, which I fully understand, and the CDs will be properly
disposed of. So how many artists actually read the fine print on
applications? Don't laugh but I've done over 1,000 art shows and have
never completely read an application. |
|
December 30th, 2008
Newsletter |
Columbus Open ZAPP Jury Feb 7-8, 2009
If you've never seen your images (or your competition's images) projected,
this is a worthwhile experience. The jury is scheduled for February 7-8
and will be held in Upper Arlington at the City Manager's office:
3600 Tremont Rd. Upper Arlington Ohio 43221
For more information you can call the Columbus Arts Festival office at
614-224-2606
I'll be attending at least one day and am looking to share a hotel room.
Sharing a hotel room during an open jury gives artists a lot of time to
analyze how the images look when projected.
Looking for Jurors to be Interviewed
If you've juried a show in the past year or will be jurying a show this
year, I'd like to do a short telephone interview with you to add to my
juror interviews. Artists need all the information they can get when it
comes to preparing their images for jurying. The interview can be
anonymous if you choose. I'm especially looking to talk to jurors that
have juried shows using Juried Art Services.
Here's a link to my previous
juror interviews
Baltimore ACC - How to Photograph Art - Booth Slides
I've been asked to host a round table discussion on photographing art
during the wholesale days at the Baltimore ACC show. Tentative date is
Wednesday morning February 25th. Look for more information in a future
newsletter. I've been asked by a few artists to shoot their booth pictures
so I'll be bringing a camera and tripod. If you want me to shoot your
booth, call me.
If you need something photographed in time to meet any
of the deadlines, give me a call at 800-350-9289.
There are over 35 shows closing in January.
Here's a list of shows and closing
dates for the next month, most on ZAPP and some on JAS.
Other Shows Asking for Digital Images
If you've hired me to work on your images, I've always provided a CD of
1920x1920 ZAPP images. You'll need those images for other shows that are
asking for either images submitted on a CD or to be e-mailed. Most shows
that ask for digital images are clueless, only asking for resolution
(300DPI) and not actual images which requires specifying height and width
or at the very least long pixel dimension. If you need help getting images
together for these shows, please call me as early as possible so I'll have
time to prepare your images, burn a CD and mail it to you. If a show
doesn't specify size, I recommend sending your ZAPP images. Make sure to
copy the images to your computer and rename them according to the show
application specifications. Usually that means something like
lastname-firstname-image01.jpg |
|
December 16th, 2008
Newsletter |
Happy Holidays
Our 2008 Christmas card featuring
our puppy Xena:
Des Moines live video feed and what we learned by
watching it.
A few weeks ago, the Des Moines Art Festival had a live video feed of the
ZAPP projection jury on the home page of their web site. Granted, the
video quality was pretty poor and there was no sound, but it still was
interesting to watch for the two and a half days it was happening. I did
receive a few calls from artists who weren't happy with the way their
images looked and wanted me to evaluate them. I don't think that any
images seen in that video feed should have been judged for quality for a
number of reasons. There were artifacts from the poor quality feed. There
was a slight angle of the outer screens to the camera. And there seemed to
be slight screen movement, and if it wasn't screen movement the artifacts
were even worse. But you could judge how your body of work compared to
everyone else's. You could judge how well backgrounds matched and
individual pieces balanced each other. I certainly hope they do it again
next year and this time let everyone know in advance, not just the artists
who had applied. I happened to catch a post about it on the Art Fair
SourceBook forum just before the jury started.
And speaking of the Art Fair SourceBook forum
Here's an interesting post by Sheree Sorrells (used with permission) about
how the economy is affecting shows and what one artist is doing to prepare
for the changes.
"I have just finished up a series of shows, 5 in 7
weeks. Four of them were in NC. One in Sarasota FL. 2 shows, both ACC
(American Craft Council) shows were better than last year by as much as
40%. The NC shows held even with last year on one, the others were down
about 60% from last years figures. Ironically, one of the better shows was
an ACC show, also in NC.
I was very concerned about the effect of the economy
going into this series, and even posted a question about slashing prices
on this forum. We did not cut our prices. But we did do some other things.
1)We redesigned our booth display to focus on higher end pieces. And we
tried to lessen the confusion overall of our product line. This worked.
2)We spent a large amount of time beforehand producing smaller items, that
retailed at a lower price point. At our worst shows, it was the lower
priced items that saved us. 3) We did a mailer for every show. And I
didn't use the mailing piece provided by the promoter. I designed my own,
showing multiple shots of items we would have, and offered a "value"
coupon for $25. savings on a large item purchased. We could only tell any
effect from the mailer at all, at one show. One of the better ones. It
brought in (to my specific knowledge) about $1000. in sales, and we only
ended up giving one $25. discount. Overall, we mailed about 500 first
class pieces so I'm not sure it was worth it.
We will cut back next year too. If a show has an "iffy"
record, we will probably sit it out. We are going to continue offering the
lower end items, but we are also going to add some even higher end items.
It is the middle range that we may cut back on. The shows that are most
far away will have to earn its existence on our schedule on a newer, more
stringent level."
ZAPP image descriptions are now more important. I've
been given a series of monitor jurying screen captures to update the
simulation on my web site. With the new format, there will no longer be
scrolling to see the bottoms of verticals and squares. And when the juror
hovers the mouse over an image, an "I" (for Information) appears. When
clicking on it, they will see the image description in an overlay.
Interesting that they chose that format from iPhoto, the MAC image viewing
program. If I were to design it, I would have the information appear just
by hovering the mouse over the image and eliminate the two middle steps.
You can see a simulation of the new
format on this page of my web site.
More artists taken advantage of by clueless
photographers.
If you can get 20 (or more) photographs of your work for $300, please be
certain the photographer understands what jury slides are and how to
photograph your work properly. Twice in the past month I was asked to fix
too many images that were photographed incorrectly because the artist
thought they were getting a deal. If the price seems too good, it probably
is too good, and fixing the images usually cost more than the photography.
I've been asked to host a round table discussion on
photographing art during the wholesale days at the Baltimore ACC show.
Tentative date is Wednesday morning February 25th. Look for more
information in a future newsletter. |
|
November 17, 2008
Newsletter |
Main Street Fort Worth gives back to the artists
Jay Downie, director of the Fort Worth show, sent out an e-mail to
everyone who had applied explaining that their expenses are budgeted for
1,100 applications and since they went over 1,100, the difference will be
reduced from the booth fees of accepted artists. Last year he reduced the
booth fee by $15 and this year by $20. For the record, they received 1,310
applications this year for 200 spaces plus 14 emerging artist spaces. The
emerging artist spaces will not be reduced because they already are less
than the standard booth fee.
The Relationship between an Artist and Photographer
Most artists only have five or six pieces photographed when they hire a
photographer. Fused glass artist Nina Falk has sent me over 50
pieces of glass to photograph in the past year, and as a result, she has
great images for jurying, her two new web sites, gallery submissions, and
magazine ads. The article with some
example photographs
Juried Art Services has expanded it's show list with the
Amy Amdur shows. Port Clinton in Highland Park Illinois is Amy's top show
and is one of those rare shows where anything is possible because
expensive work has a reputation for selling well in the neighborhood that
the show is located in.
Be careful of other digital image format requests
- old information but it continues to be relevant -
As more and more shows are asking for digital images (usually on a CD)
we're seeing some ridiculous image size requests, or worse, no image size
request at all. Image size request should be in height and width in
pixels. And as I've been saying for the past four years, the 1920x1920
format should be considered the standard with over 200 art shows on ZAPP
and over 20,000 artists with that size images on their computer. Any time
you get an application asking for a non standard image size, please
contact the show and ask if they'll take 1920x1920 ZAPP formatted images.
And if you (or your friends) have hired someone other than me to work on
your images, make sure to get your ZAPP images on a CD so you can use them
to apply to shows not using ZAPP. |
|
October 20, 2008 Newsletter |
Too many Artfests or is it
Artsfests
I recently had to help a friend complete an application on ZAPP. The show
she was applying to was "ArtsFest". Or should I say ArtsFest period.
Nowhere in the name was a mention of location of the show on ZAPP. And
clicking on the name which brought me to the page which listed the
information and "apply to this show" link. It took reading through six
paragraphs before there was mention of Stuart Florida where the art center
was located. Makes me wonder why the show wasn't called "ArtsFest Stuart"
or something logical like that. That's what I call a ZAPPism.
Deadline Approaching - Do You Know Where Your Pixels Are
Nothing makes me more upset than a jury slide photographer that takes
advantage of an artist. I was contacted by a jeweler that had hired a
photographer to shoot a few pieces of jewelry. The photographer provided
TIF's on a CD that were only sized to 1800 pixels long dimension, too
small for ZAPP. To compound the situation he photographed all the vertical
pieces of jewelry HORIZONTALLY making them even smaller, and when all the
dead space was cropped off, some were around 900 pixels long dimension.
And in a really stupid move, he had provided ZAPP images that squished the
jewelry to make some of the pieces look square. I have a real hard time
with jury slide photographers who purposely give artists digital images
that are too small for ZAPP. It would't surprise me if this photographer
charges by the pixel, screwing artists that are technology challenged by
offering them something they don't need at a reduced rate. Make sure that
if you hire a photographer, you get what you need without having to pay
extra for it. If you want to know the name of the photographer, call me on
the phone at 412-767-8644. I'm always happy to both recommend or tell you
way I don't recommend a particular photographer.
The article with some example photographs
Virtual Jury
For artists who want their artwork evaluated by an experienced juror, I
recommend Bruce Baker. You can sign up for a virtual jury on the Art Fair
SourceBook web site. I've been given permission to reproduce the
jury feedback from a ceramicist who had
Bruce Baker evaluate their jury images.
Getting into Shows you've been Rejected from
I've been hearing from artists who have been successful in getting into
some ZAPP shows after they've gotten their rejection notice. Since ZAPP
has widened the geographic demographics of artists applying to shows, with
the economy and gas prices being what they are, the number of artists
canceling has increased over what it was a year or two ago. This has
created prime opportunities for (local) artists to call and see if there
are any spaces available because shows are going through their waiting
lists faster. |
|
September 23, 2008
Newsletter |
Too many images
ZAPP profiles are filling up. Recently I've had to contact a few artists
to delete old images in their profiles to make room for new images. If you
need to delete images and find that they are committed, go back to your
"my ZAPPlication" page and "archive" all shows that give you that option.
That will free up images connected to those applications so they can be
deleted. Another alternative is to create an additional ZAPP profile for
your new work and apply through that for future shows. Just make sure to
upload a display image to the new profile. I can do all of that for you if
you need help.
JAS and truncated artist statement
I've been contacted by a few artists who have had their artist statement
truncated in an application. The one common denominator is that they are
on a MAC. If you are having this problem, I can help submit your
application properly if you give me a call. I have spoken to the Juried
Art Services people about it so it may be fixed by the time you read this.
AOL not digital jury friendly
It was recently posted on the ZAPP forum by an administrator that there
were problems with AOL and sometimes clicking on a link would get the
artist bumped out of what they were working on. This has been a problem
for the past four years and it seems to have escalated with the new
interface. If AOL is giving you problems, after logging in, minimize the
AOL screen and start a different browser. Here are links to download the
two most popular browsers (both are free and available for PC and MAC)
besides Internet Explorer, which hasn't been supported on the MAC for at
least four years.
Firefox and Opera.
Opera has been my default browser for the past five or six years.
Howard Alan on ZAPP
You may have noticed that the latest weekly notification about ZAPP shows
have a ton of new shows listed. Howard Alan is now on ZAPP. Either you
love him or hate him but most artists have done at least one Howard Alan
show in their art show career. His fine art shows are now listed with
ZAPP. That ought to shake up the art show industry a little. In Howard's
words, ZAPP is where the artists go to look for shows to do. And like
Sugarloaf, currently his shows can be applied to either the conventional
way with slides and a paper application or through ZAPP.
And a word to the wise.
With Howard Alan's shows listed on ZAPP, there will be several shows with
similar names. Make sure you read the information very carefully about the
show you are about to apply to. And you may also want to check out the
show web site for more information
Show Deadlines I no longer have closing dates listed on
my home page due to the now much larger number of shows that have signed
on with ZAPP. I suggest all artists contact ZAPP and ask them to list the
shows with closing dates on the home page of the ZAPP web site, like
Juried Art Services does. I've put contact information for ZAPP on
this page of my
web site.
Shows Extending Deadlines Illogically
I'm using Winter Park as an example because this just happened a few days
ago. I recently noticed that Winter park extended it's deadline. Every
Wednesday ZAPP sends out a list of shows closing in the next week. They
had Winter Park listed as closing on September 19th. But in logging in I
noticed that the deadline was extended until the 21st. The problem is that
no one knew that the deadline was extended because the next ZAPP notice
was not scheduled until September 24th. This is a perfect example of why
ZAPP needs to list the shows with closing dates on their home page. |
|
August 13, 2008 Newsletter |
Where did the "Apply" button go?
Within the past few months, ZAPP changed the size of the center white area
of all their web pages. This change has made the page too wide for anyone
on an 800x600 resolution monitor and requires horizontal scrolling to see
the rest of the page content. In other words, if you use an older computer
or a small monitor, you may not see the right side of the page where the
"apply to this show" button is when you're trying to apply to a show. As
of July 2006, 17% still used 800x600 resolution monitors. And as of
February 2008, only 7% of viewers used 800x600 screens. But the real
question is how many artists use that size because they either have older
computers or have scrimped when purchase a computer because they really
weren't that interested in the technology when they chose a monitor. In
the past week, I received calls from three artists who couldn't see the
"apply" button and I walked them through horizontal scrolling to see what
was on the right side of their screen.
Comcast search brings in too many results
In a non art show related poor usability example, Comcast cable just
changed their menu configuration. Formally when you did a search for
movies, you only saw movies starting within the half hour time period that
you did your search for, making it easy to decide what to watch. Now each
time you do a search for all movies, Comcast shows you eight screens of
seven channels each and it's no longer easy to see what's starting,
forcing you to take unnecessary time reading through a list of movies,
some ending within the next five minutes. Working at home I enjoy watching
movies and have been paying for all the pay channels. I no longer can
figure out what's starting so they've lost my monthly pay channel fees.
The sad part is that they let you choose search parameters for types of
movies but don't let you choose only movies yet to start.
http://bermangraphics.com/problems/comcast.htm
I received a call from an artist whose images I had
worked on. Betsy Kube of the
Crafts America Shows wanted to use the images
to promote a show but the jury images on Juried Art Services weren't large
enough. I called Betsy to discuss image requirements so I could provide
images at the correct size for her needs. In the ensuing conversation we
discussed the best way to get artists to supply high resolution images.
Providing high resolution images to shows gives the artist a much better
chance of the show using those images for promotional material, which in
turn also benefits the artist by giving them more exposure to the buying
public. My suggestion was for each artist to prepare a "press kit"
consisting of a bio or artist statement and a set of high resolution
images of their art. You can read more about
my press kit suggestions:
New addition to the Berman family.
On July 25th we picked up a puppy. What's
more appropriate than some ZAPP formatted puppy pictures. |
|
July 13, 2008 Newsletter |
Jury Details Revisited
In a recent thread on the NAIA forum, there was discussion of a ZAPP show
that was offering to jury exempt artists for next year if they paid a
substantial amount at this years show. I think it's time for artists to
put pressure on any show not divulging how many spaces they have open for
jurying along with other show particulars. All of this information is
supposed to be on the "jury details" of their ZAPP profile which (at this
point) isn't mandatory to fill out. What I suggest doing is sending an
e-mail to (or calling) each show stating you are considering applying but
will only do so if you know how many spaces are available and how many
applications the show received last year so you can judge what your odds
are. Expenses are too high and shows will have to become more interested
in artist's welfare if they want to continue to get our hard earned money.
Severe storms rock the art shows two weeks ago. Evanston
and Omaha reported really bad storms that damaged a lot of artist's
booths. Don Ament provided these
cell phone pictures from
the Omaha show.
Everyone's an Expert
A wise artist once told me that you have to be careful when looking for
help with your images because most people you ask seem to think that they
know everything, but in reality, they only know what they know and that
usually isn't enough. A furniture maker needed pictures of his work to
apply to art shows. Unfortunately, the photographer he hired told him that
he had experience working with artists but then did a really poor job.
Read more about the story. |
|
June 26, 2008 Newsletter |
A reminder that ACC applications deadline is the end of
July. Contrary to the way they've juried in the past, they will now have
their jurors stay at home and jury on their computer monitors instead of
seeing the images projected. What this means for the artists is that the
three over two template is no longer relevant and is going to be changed
to five across, if it hasn't already. The way the ZAPP monitor jurying is
set up is that the jurors see each image individually one after another.
That means your strongest images might be better at the beginning and end
of the presentation for a good first and last impression.
Look at these pages for an example of
how the ZAPP monitor jurying currently looks.
It's not too late to have me work on new images for the
ACC or any other show, and I can
also photograph your
artwork.
Waiting lists. I've been hearing rumors that some shows
have not been honoring their wait lists and just calling local artists at
the last minute. I don't have any specific information but I do recommend
keeping in close contact with any show you happen to be on the wait list
for if you really want to do the show. Though a show may say not to call,
I recommend calling once a week to keep it in their mind that you are
serious about doing the show. And if it's convenient and not too
expensive, tell them you intend to be their waiting on set up day. I've
personally gotten into a lot of major shows over the years doing that.
|
|
May 2, 2008 Newsletter |
My latest juror interview is up.
A jeweler who was a Mount Gretna juror shares her thoughts about the
process and offers some tips. What's a Booth Shot?
Prior to Cherry Creek closing last November, I received an e-mail from
someone asking me to define a booth shot. He had 40 photographs in a newly
created profile on ZAPP and wanted to apply to Cherry Creek. I explained
that it was a picture of your display set up at an art show and if there
was no booth slide available, he could still apply in the emerging artist
category. His response was that he had just graduated from art school and
would change his application to the emerging artist category. As a follow
up, he just e-mailed me the other day asking about which canopy to buy. It
seems that he did get into a show (not Cherry Creek) and now needed to
purchase display equipment.
ZAPPism
definition - anything that doesn't make sense relative to digital jurying.
I've now included a few ZAPPisms in my seminar.
ZAPPism Example
I received a call from an artist who is a painter who paints on porcelain,
not canvas or paper. He is very clear about the process in his artist
statement and individual art image descriptions. He had applied to a show
in the painting category and the show moved his application to the
ceramics category, and he was wait listed. Problem is that if he does the
show in ceramics category he would be considered buy/sell. A follow up.
The artist contacted the show and explained that if he were called off the
wait list it wouldn't be fair to an artist who actually worked in
ceramics. He feels that he did the right thing. What do you think?
NAIA Coconut Grove Sales Survey
The artist survey about their sales is now available to download (as a PDF)
from the NAIA web site. It also includes a lot of quotes from artists
about the show:
http://naia-artists.org/work/surveys.htm?
A Great Art
Show Success Story
Mark Zurek, photographer/digital artist had the show of a lifetime at Fort
Worth last month. You can read about his experience, including his list of
five things he did wrong when he started out doing shows just three short
years ago:
Art Show Deadlines
Connie Mettler, director of Arts Beats and Eats has extended her deadline
for submission. Here are her thoughts on the subject of art show
deadlines.
"Most of you have been in this business for some time, but I've got to
say, that for many, many years I believed that the DEADLINE on an
application was strictly a "drop dead deadline," miss the deadline, you
were out of luck. I am sure this is true still for only a handful of
shows. More and more I hear from show directors that the deadline isn't
the deadline until the projectors (or the rokus) are rolling. In addition,
these days many shows are not filling their events by the time of the
jurying and often have spaces long past jury time. So, in case you have
never heard this before, if you missed a deadline make a phone call.
Artists are the constituency of art fairs, without you they do not exist.
Most art fair organizers are glad to talk to you."
http://www.artsbeatseats.com
EZUp in the Snow
Emmett Hollander provided a
few pictures from the Tulip Festival Street Fair in Mount Vernon,
WA
My next Seminar will be in Greenville SC on May 22nd for
the Artisphere show. Call 864-271-9355 for more information. |
|
April 10, 2008 Newsletter |
The case of the missing ZAPP images
From time to time, I get a frantic telephone call or e-mail from an artist
who logged into their ZAPP profile and can't find any images. There has
never been a case where images are missing from a ZAPP profile. It's
always that the artist has an additional profile they may have never used
and they logged into the wrong one by mistake. If you want to find out if
you have additional profiles, click on the "Forgot Password" link under
where you would enter your username and password. Then enter your e-mail
address on the page it brings you to. ZAPP will then send you all your
usernames and passwords connected to your e-mail address.
What does ZAPP and College Applications have in common?
In a parallel to what's happening with ZAPP with the art shows getting
more applications, online applications are making admissions into Colleges
more difficult. Someone posted about this to my Photography forum
recently. Because of a universal online application used by over 300
schools called "Common Application," High School students are now applying
to up to 20 universities, where they may have only applied to about five
to eight in the past. Here's an article about it:
http://www.collegeboard.com/parents/apply/narrow-college-list/150489.html
Here's a quote from a 2006 USA Today article:
"Admissions deans say the ease of applying online, along with the growing
popularity of the Common Application — a standardized form now used even
by many brand-name institutions — are fueling the increase. The number of
Common Applications filed online has skyrocketed from just under 41,000 in
2000-01 to a predicted 700,000 this year." Can that be where art show
applications are headed?
More Juror Interviews
I have three more juror
interviews on my web site. Two from artists and one from a gallery
owner. They are now listed on this page with the newest interviews at the
top:
Improving the System
Suggestions on improving the digital jury systems. I have a page of
suggestions I've made to ZAPP on how to improve the system. If you're
interested in my thoughts on the process,
you can read it on
this page.
Cherry Creek Statistics
For the 2008 festival. 231 juried artists and 8 "Emerging Artists" were
chosen from 2,231 artist applications. 13 artists are from the state of
Colorado. 89 are first-time-ever CCAF exhibitors, and 67 artists exhibited
in 2006 or prior; this means nearly 70% (156 artists) artists are new for
2008. |
|
March 10, 2008 Newsletter |
Closing deadlines There are over 20 shows
closing in the next week on ZAPP and JAS.
Juried Art Services image update follow up
The image requirement wording change for Juried Art Services I mentioned
last month shouldn't make anyone run out and change their images, which
some artists have contacted me about. No matter what size is uploaded
(between 1400 and 2000 pixels long dimension) the jurors only will see the
images at 700 pixels long dimension, exactly the same as they've always
done since the Smithsonian Craft Show started using JAS years ago.
Coconut Grove sales figures
Coconut Grove reported to the Miami Herald that between six and eight
million dollars worth of art was sold at the 2008 show, which they claim
was about the same as was sold in 2007. At 325 booths, that would be an
average of about $18,000 per booth at the low end. The problem with this
number is that a great many artists reported not making any sales or just
barely making expenses. To counter this claim of artists riches, NAIA has
created an anonymous survey and sent out an e-mail to all artists who have
done the show since 2006. If you've exhibited at the Grove in the past
three years and have not received the e-mail about the survey, please let
me know and I'll provide a link. This is an important survey because if
shows think that the artists are really making that much money, they feel
justified in continuing to raise their booth fee. The booth fee for
Coconut Grove went up $100 in 2008 from the year before.
ZAPP web site off line
On Sunday evening March 2nd, the ZAPP web site was unavailable. If you
tried to visit the site that evening your browser may have "cached" the
page saying it was down for maintenance and for the next few days it kept
showing you the same down for maintenance page each time you went back.
The way a browser works is that it downloads web pages (files and images)
to a folder called "cache" on your computer and loads the page from your
local folder to save bandwidth and time. A number of artists contacted me
during that week saying that they were still unable to access the ZAPP
site. The solution was to reload or refresh the page or to clear your
temporary internet files. Both would force your browser to go to the
server and reload the page again. A third solution would be to try an
alternate browser.
Modifying a ZAPP application after submission
Most artists know that Juried Art Services lets you tinker endlessly with
your application up until the closing date. There is also a way to make
changes in a ZAPP application once submitted but it's a little more
complicated. You need to contact the show (I suggest telephone) and ask
them to set your application back to incomplete so you can make changes
before submitting it again without having to pay an additional jury fee.
This only works up until the deadline and you are at the mercy of the
show, but I've never heard of a show turning down an artist's request to
make changes.
More from Broad Ripple.
They received 764 applications their first year with ZAPP, which is up 200
from last year. But the most interesting statistic is that 42% of the
applications were from artists who had never applied before.
Open Jury
St James Court will be holding an open jury on March 29-30. Call
502-635-1842 for more information. If you hear of any other shows holding
open juries, please let me know.
Bethesda Row
Though they have not signed up with ZAPP, they've created an online
application where you can upload your ZAPP formatted images:
http://www.bethesdarowarts.org/application |
|
February 17, 2008 Newsletter |
We're in the middle of the Winter madness
with over 30 shows closing each month through March. I wonder how many
artists are applying to more shows now with digital applications being so
much easier than preparing slides and checks and running to the post
office each time a deadline approaches.
Tips
from a La Quinta juror
Another in my continuing series of interviews with jurors. I was fortunate
to be able to speak to a Juror from La Quinta. It's interesting to read
about how the jurors juried only one category, at home, and are given
three days to complete their scoring. Could this be the future of ZAPP?
Juried Art Services new image requirement wording
Nothing to worry about. Though they raised the upper limit (to 2000
pixels) of what size can be submitted, they are going to continue
accepting images prepared at 1400 pixels long dimension as they've been
accepting for the past few years. The wording has been simplified at my
request. "Select an image file: JPG Files Only (.jpg or .jpeg). Images
should be between 1400 pixels and 2000 pixels longest dimension at 300PPI
(pixels per inch). 1920x1920 pixel images are also acceptable."
When previewing your image choices on a Juried Art
Services application, make sure to pay attention to the position of the
images on the preview screen. I started an application for Sausalito to do
screen captures for my web site and noticed that it's two over two with
the booth image on a separate page.
Click here to see how
the jurors for shows using Juried Art Services see the images
Does your booth slide look like it works with your
individual art images.
From an artist who observed the Broad Ripple jury: During the Photography
category there was a good deal of confusion because one applicant had
submitted three black and white landscape photos and a booth image with
European color photos. In the initial run through, the staff even flipped
around to another booth shot that seemed to "fit". But when they did the
second round where they actually scored, they realized the color booth
went with the black and white landscapes. Something to keep in mind: make
sure your booth image fits with your submitted artwork!
Shows posting images of accepted artists To add to the
list I previously sent out,
Coconut Grove includes one image for each artist:
On a (not so) humorous note. The Corn Hill show juries
by holding the slide sleeve up to the light. They even specify that slides
in frosted vinyl sleeves may not be juried. Maybe things aren't so bad for
the artists on ZAPP... |
|
January 22, 2008 Newsletter |
Listing of shows on ZAPP
Finally ZAPP listened to my complaints about the ways shows list
themselves. They are now listed by the actual name of the show. No more
5th annual whatever festival following 57th Street. With over 150 shows,
it's now easier to find a specific show on the page.
Ever wonder what it's like to be a juror? Mary Jane
Cross was a juror for the 2007 Long's Park show and she offers some
insight into what a juror thinks about:
Interview with a Long's Park
juror
Two things she stressed were the amount of time they had to look at the
images and the short (100 character) artist statement.
Shows posting images of accepted artists
Lafayette Round the Fountain posts the entire set of images (including the
booth) of accepted artists:
http://www.roundthefountain.org/2007_preview.htm
Here are a few more:
Smithsonian Craft Show
http://smithsoniancraftshow.org/indexmain.asp
Philadelphia Craft Show
http://pmacraftshow.org/artists
If you know of an art show web site that allows you to
view the images of the accepted artists, please send me a link.
Jury details and grandfathered shows continued
Bayou City sent out an e-mail to all artists that applied: "In addition to
representatives from the Art Colony Board, we are please to inform you
that your work will be reviewed by our invited panel", and then listed the
jurors names. I wonder if they give their board members the same scoring
weight as their jurors. Well, at least they tell you what's going on.
The St Louis Art Fair lists available spaces as 139 plus
26 reinvited artists for a total of 165 booths. They normally receive 1200
applications. No wonder I've never been able to get in.... |
|
December 28, 2007 Newsletter |
Happy holidays.
A short newsletter this month and a reminder to check the deadlines of the
shows you plan on applying to. There are over 30 shows on ZAPP and Juried
Art Services closing between now and the beginning of February.
Sausalito, one of the top rated art shows in the
country, is now taking applications through
Juried Art Services.
Defining the booth slide.
I've created a web page that
helps artists understand what a booth slide is. I'm looking for
examples of booth slides in all different mediums (except photography) to
be used as examples. Names will not be used. If you would be willing to
let me use your booth picture, or even have an old booth jury slide you
can send me, please let me know.
Jury details and grandfathered shows continued.
57th Street - "Approximately 75 new artists will be invited to exhibit.
The remaining 200 spots are filled by returning artists." Old Town - 20%
of the spaces will be filled by new artists
Last chance.
If you might be interested in exhibiting at Ann Arbor, now would be the
time to join the Michigan Guild. Exhibiting members of The Guild are
tenured, and only need to jury once every three years to maintain their
space in the Ann Arbor show. In the past that meant that it took many
years for new associate members to rise to exhibiting status. Now that is
all changing. Starting in January 2008 Associate Members will no longer be
allowed to join, and the new Artist Members will not be given spaces in
the show until all the Associate Members have been offered exhibiting
status. I know this may sound complicated, but the bottom line is that if
you join now there is an excellent chance that you will be a tenured
member in a few years. After the first of the year that opportunity will
be lost. And being able to count on being in a show like the Ann Arbor
Summer Art Show is worth a lot. For a sign up form and more information go
to the Guild’s web site:
http://theguild.org
Look for the Michigan Guild to start jurying through
Juried Art Services
in 2008.
Interested in doing your own jury slide photography
continued. I've added a page of lighting diagrams to my "do your own
photography" resource section. And I've consolidated all the relevant
information by creating a single page
of links: |
|
November 29, 2007 Newsletter |
It seems that as soon as I send out one of
these newsletters, new information is made available to me worth passing
on to you.
I spoke to Kat Bauer at the La Quinta show a few days after the jury
results went out. For those of you who applied and didn't get in, they are
giving out the jury scores if you call the show. A quote from Kat; "La
Quinta believes that everyone that pays to apply deserves to know their
score." She also told me that they have different jurors for each medium.
La Quinta may be the only show I'm aware of where the jurors have some
knowledge of the medium they are jurying.
Blame it on semantics. Gasparilla sent out their jury results e-mail with
the words "pre-jury" in the subject line. I received calls and e-mails
from both accepted and rejected artists asking if I know whether there
were to be two juries. Turns out that Gasparilla has always considered the
slide (and now ZAPP) jury as a pre-jury and the real jury is the first day
of the show for the award money. I've done the show about a half dozen
times over the years and never knew that. But then like most artists, I
never read applications further than the deadline, amount of slides, check
amounts and whether an artist statement is asked for.
The Fort Worth open jury was held over the November 10-11 weekend. I
received an e-mail from a digital artist who had applied in the emerging
artist category. He described his experience observing the ZAPP jury and
how much he learned by being able see his images projected and how he was
able to ask questions of the jurors when it was over:
Read the article here
How to sort the list of shows on ZAPP.
Do not use the link on "Participating Shows" the left. Use the "Apply to
Shows" link on the top of the page. Then using the drop down box, if you
sort by "application deadlines", it will bring up the entire list of shows
in the order of their deadlines, actually showing the deadline date in the
list. Then click on "View More Info" for the show you wish to apply to. In
the past, if you have used the "participating shows" list on the left,
using the "apply to shows" will make finding the show you want to apply to
much easier.
If you might be interested in exhibiting at Ann Arbor, now would be the
time to join the Michigan Guild. Exhibiting members of The Guild are
tenured, and only need to jury once every three years to maintain their
space in the Ann Arbor show. In the past that meant that it took many
years for new associate members to rise to exhibiting status. Now that is
all changing. Starting in January 2008 Associate Members will no longer be
allowed to join, and the new Artist Members will not be given spaces in
the show until all the Associate Members have been offered exhibiting
status. I know this may sound complicated, but the bottom line is that if
you join now there is an excellent chance that you will be a tenured
member in a few years. After the first of the year that opportunity will
be lost. And being able to count on being in a show like the Ann Arbor
Summer Art Show is worth a lot. For a sign up form and more information go
to the Guild’s web site:
http://theguild.org
Jury details and grandfathered shows. Someone pointed out an inaccuracy in
the 57th Street listing. In researching the closing date in their ZAPP
information, I came across the sentence that specifies how many spaces are
actually open for jurying:
"Approximately 75 new artists will be invited to exhibit. The remaining
200 spots are filled by returning artists."
I wonder how many artists have actually read the fine print of any show
they are applying to. Not that 57th Street is doing anything wrong. In
fact, they are probably one of the few shows that is giving us the odds in
advance of getting accepted.
Interested in doing your own jury slide photography.
I don't have to reinforce how competitive jurying is and recommend against
it unless you have really have a handle on lighting and how to use a
digital camera. I've been working with a few products that use daylight
florescent bulbs and make it (relatively) easy to get good exposure and
color while lessening chances of hot spots on 3D work.
A list of the products and
links to examples taken with themThe key
to using any of these products is the light from the bulbs is diffused
through white Plexiglas or white nylon.
My relevant companion article on how to
set and use your digital camera
A final note here. Every image needs post processing. No
matter how good you are with lighting or a digital camera, the images
still need to be post processed to look their best. |
|
November 2, 2007 Newsletter |
The big news this month is that The
Michigan Guild has signed with Juried Art Services for 2008. If
you're a Guild member, look for information about it in their January
newsletter. Let me know if you need help getting set up on Juried Art
Services. That makes two Ann Arbor shows using Juried Art Services, the
South University merchants show and the Guild.
You may have applied to Rittenhouse Square last year
using Juried Art Services. This year they are doing their own digital
jurying and are asking for ZAPP formatted images on a CD with a postmark
deadline of January 4th. You can download their application in PDF
format from:
http://www.rittenhousesquarefineartshow.org
If I had known about it, I would have written about it
sooner. Coconut Grove has an open jury each year around the end of
September. I've been told that they jury two dimensional and three
dimensional work on separate days with different jurors, and for those
artists attending, they allow you to speak to the jurors on the day
their work isn't being shown.
If you know of any other shows that have open juries,
please let me know so I can write about it here.
Jury Slide Photography
If you're in a bind and need to have work photographed to meet a deadline,
give me a call. 800-350-9289. Here are a
few examples of jury slide photography I've done recently. |
|
October 14, 2007 Newsletter |
ZAPP tip
Since art shows started using ZAPP, artists have wondered about the order
their images were seen by the jurors within their medium. In the course of
a recent discussion about image order on the ZAPP forum, this reply was
posted by Lara Turner: The ZAPP software enables three distinct options
for show administrators to "order" artist submissions in their panel
process: (1) by the date that the application was received (changing an
application from received to incomplete will not change the application
received date as that is logged when the show first receives the
application), (2) by the artist's last name or (3) by artist ID. The first
two options are self-explanatory; the artist ID option presents
submissions to the jury in a completely random order (the software uses
the ID number to "randomize" the ordering of results). In response to your
specific question about whether there is a default setting, a show must
choose one of these options; we prefer not to have any "defaults". So from
my perspective, all shows should use application received date for the
order to be fairest.
Watching a ZAPP Jury
I've previously posted about how important it is to see your images
projected in a jury room. I received this e-mail from an artist client the
other day: I was invited to view the preliminary run through for Ft Myers
the day before the jury started. All I can say is it was amazing. As long
as your images are done right using all the image area and color punch
they are incredible to see. Much better than what a slide projector does.
My images look exactly like my artwork and jumped right off the wall. If
anyone has a chance to see their art work projected like the judges do,
you do learn a lot!!! Thanks for all your help, it's much appreciated!!!
Reminder.
Fort Worth is having an open jury with a preview Friday night cocktail
party on November 9th - 11th. If you're interested in attending, I'm
looking for a (male) roommate. I did it last year with two other
photographers and we spent the entire time analyzing the jury process and
how the images looked.
Another open jury.
I just did a seminar at the Indianapolis Art center. Broad Ripple will be
holding an open ZAPP jury and you'll be able to see all the images
projected. Look for their jury dates to be held early next year when they
announce that their application is open. And though they're going to be
using ZAPP, they've also said that they want to give the artists their
jury scores like they've done in the past.
20-30% more applications
The latest issue of Sunshine Artist quoted the director of the Broad
Ripple Art Show saying that they were told that they would get 20-30% more
applications. I have yet to find out who gave them that figure, but it
confirms everything we've suspected. Therefore I can't stress how
important the quality of your jury images are.
Deadlines
I now have only the current month's closing dates on my home page and have
moved the long list of
art show
closing dates to an internal page.
Jury Slide Photography
If you're in a bind and need to have work photographed to meet a deadline,
give me a call. 800-350-9289. Here are a
few examples of jury slide photography I've done recently.
Seminar Information
If you've attended one of my digital jury image seminars, I have
a page of downloads and links
for most of the information I speak about: |
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September 5, 2007 Newsletter |
We're now into September. Over 15 shows have deadlines this
month, including lots of the Florida ZAPP deadlines, and the Smithsonian
Craft Show using Juried Art Services.
I maintain a list of shows application
deadlines.
ZAPP Jury Tip
The majority of the ZAPP shows are using monitors instead of digital
projectors. I've set up a simulation of ZAPP monitor jurying on my web
site showing how a horizontal image, vertical image and square image look
to the jurors. You can experience
ZAPP monitor jurying starting on this page.
ZAPP Jury Tip
Main Street Fort Worth is having an open jury on November 9th through the
11th. Friday evening is a preview party where all the images are shown and
then you can spend an extended period of time looking at your own images.
The two day jury starts Saturday morning and is also open for artists to
observe. Even if you're not applying to the Fort Worth show, it's an
amazing experience seeing five ZAPP images projected across a twenty foot
wall. I'll be attending. I attended last years Fort Worth open jury and wrote about it for my web
site
ZAPP Jury Tip
St James Court. Last week at the NAIA show directors conference, I spoke
to Margue Esrock, director of the St James Court art show about the number
of spaces they have open for jurying. I was told that they have an onsite
jury that invites back 45% of the show and have 55% of the spaces open for
jurying through ZAPP. I suggested that she make that information available
on the show's jury details page.
I'll be doing an all day seminar at the Indianapolis Art Center on October
6th for the Broad Ripple show which will be using ZAPP next year. The
morning portion will be my seminar on preparing accurate digital jury
images of artwork and the afternoon session will be a new seminar I've
prepared on marketing for artists.
I send these ZAPP Tips out through an online service called Vertical
Response. Please, if you reply, do not send picture attachments as I won't
receive them. Send them to my regular e-mail address at
larry@bermanart.com |
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July 27, 2007 Newsletter |
ACC exhibitors, it's not too late to get me new images to work on. Even
those I get on August 1st or 2nd, I can have completed and uploaded for
you.
A reminder. More Florida shows have gone with ZAPP and the Florida jury
deadlines start September 1st. Marco Island, Mount Dora and Gasparilla
just recently announced that they are using ZAPP.
For those artists who normally do Ann Arbor, the South University show has
signed up with Juried Art Services. Now there are two major art shows
(Reston was the first) using JAS. If you need to have your ZAPP images
formatted for JAS, give me a call. I maintain an archive of the full size
color corrected files.
Two important tips worth revisiting.
ZAPP Jury Tip
Since I posted about the ZAPP shows using monitors, I became aware of a
way to find out the jury details of most of the ZAPP shows. On the
information page for each show where you begin your application, there is
a "jury details" link. I've created an instruction page on how to access
that information:
Additionally, if the show is using monitors, they are viewing the images
that you see when you click on the small thumbnails in your ZAPP profile.
Those 700 pixel square images are seen one at a time which is different
than the full set seen simultaneously if they are being projected using
multiple projectors. That means your should consider using your strongest
images first and last in your presentation.
Tips from a Cherry Creek Juror
Robert Stadnycki is an art show director (Harrisburg Arts Festival) and an
exhibiting artist. He was one of the five jurors for the 2007 Cherry Creek
Arts Festival. I had a conversation with him where he provided some
insight and image tips: |
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June 25, 2007 Newsletter |
ZAPP Jury Tip
Since I posted about the ZAPP shows using monitors, I became aware of a
way to find out the jury details of most of the ZAPP shows. On the
information page for each show where you begin your application, there is
a "jury details" link. I've created an instruction page on how to access
that information:
Tips from a Cherry Creek Juror
Robert Stadnycki is an art show director (Harrisburg Arts Festival) and an
exhibiting artist. He was one of the five jurors for the 2007 Cherry Creek
Arts Festival. I had a conversation with him where he provided some
insight and image tips:
A reminder
It's now nearing the end of June and the ACC deadline will be coming up in
just over a month. Then the winter Florida show deadlines will be starting
in September. If you have any new images that you would like me to work
on, I'm free throughout the entire month of July and most of August.
Additional Digital Services and Web Site Design
I can prepare color correct images and layouts for any use, including
postcards and catalog sheets. And I've built web sites (working with Chris
Maher) for well over 150 artists and other small businesses.
A partial
list of my web design clients can be seen on this page of my web site:
Digital Image Seminars
I just did a seminar at the Pensacola Museum of Art with Bruce Baker. If
you know of an arts organization or artist group that can benefit by my
seminar on preparing accurate digital images of artwork, please have them
contact me:
http://bermangraphics.com/seminars/digitaljury.htm |
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March 24, 2007 Newsletter |
ZAPP Jury Tip
Are you aware that more than half the shows that have signed up with ZAPP
are now using monitors to jury? The viewing format that they are using is
that the jurors see each image enlarged one after another before viewing a
page of the small thumbnails where they enter the scores. Because of this
sequence, the most important images are now the first and last, instead of
how they relate together. First impressions and last impressions need to
be your strongest images. Not all shows are divulging their jurying
methods so it's important to contact the shows you are not sure of and ask
how they will be jurying, monitors or projection.
ZAPP Jury Tip
ZAPP waiting lists are better than a waiting list for a show still using
slides. A top 20 show in it's first year with ZAPP went through more than
half it's 50 artist waiting list on the day the acceptances were sent out.
By the time the show came around, they had expired their waiting list and
were calling local artists who had scored high but had not made the
waiting list.
ZAPP Jury Tip
In October I went to the Fort Worth ZAPP jury to see how the images
projected five across. I wrote about it for my web
site
ZAPP Jury Tip
I try to keep an updated list of closing dates for all shows using either
ZAPP or JAS on the home page of my web site:
Last week I was the key note speaker for the Best of
Missouri Hands annual artist conference. My next seminar will be at the
Pensacola Museum of Art in June. If you know of an art show or artist
organization that can benefit from the information I share, please ask
them to have me do a seminar.
Art Shows asking for digital images not using ZAPP or
Juried Art Services. There is an ongoing trend for shows to create their
own digital jury system, asking for non standard image requirements. When
I hear about shows asking for digital images, I make an effort to contact
the show and ask them to please accept ZAPP formatted images because it's
now considered a standard size (1920x1920) that most artists already have.
I have an article about it with image viewing suggestions on my web site:
Please contact any show asking for non standard size
images and suggest they read the information. This is especially true for
any show not asking for square images, which is fair for artists because
it shows both horizontal and vertical images equal in size. If I've worked
on your images, I've provided a CD of the files I've prepared. You may
need those image files now to apply to shows asking for digital
submissions like I've mentioned above. If you can't find that CD or need a
duplicate, contact me and I'll provide one again for a minimal fee from my
back up files. Also, for those shows not asking for ZAPP format images, I
can easily prepare your images to meet any show requirement and provide a
CD.
Don't forget the April 1st deadlines for the high end
fine craft shows on Juried Art Services |
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April 30, 2006 Newsletter |
The past year has brought a number of changes to the art
shows, especially those that have started jurying digitally. More artists
have been applying because of the ease of the online application, which is
making for more competition. My position has always been that it's about
the images. Just because it's easy to apply doesn't make it any easier to
get accepted. The images of your artwork are all you have that sets you
apart from the other applicants.
What's better than a great jury image? A set of great
jury images that work well together in your overall presentation. To that
end, I'm offering a new service for three-dimensional artists. High end
retouching to take out hot spots on highly reflective surfaces and
dropping the images onto a neutral background that accents all the pieces
uniformly. This can take your presentation to a new level.
Examples can be
seen on this page of my web site.
A new service I'm offering two-dimensional artists is
the ability to scan oversize art up to 12x17 inches, at high enough
resolution to have more detailed digital jury images than if the work had
been photographed either digitally or with film. This is great for
scanning etchings, 11x14 photographs or small paintings.
There is a
testimonial on my digital imaging services page:
Customer service. If you've worked with me, you know the
level of customer service that I provide. I've helped hundreds of artists
get through the online application process for both ZAPP and Juried Art
Services. Here's an interesting antidote. A few weeks ago I received an
e-mail from an artist client at 4:45 on a Friday afternoon, asking if she
could get 35mm slides from her digital files for a Monday postmark
deadline. I immediately called
IPrintFromHome to see if they were working
on Saturday, formatted her full size digital files for 35mm slides and
uploaded them. The artist had the 35mm slides in her hand by 3:00 Monday
afternoon.
This is a service I've been offering since I started
scanning jury slides. If you need 35mm slides from your improved digital
files, I can format them for you and upload the files. If you want to
contact
IPrintFromHome, there is a link on my
digital files to 35mm slides
instruction page:
Because of the depth of information on BermanGraphics,
I've created a new web site called
www.ZAPPhelp.com where you can easily
find links to all the digital jury information on BermanGraphics.
The American Craft Council has moved their deadline up
by a month to the end of July. Don't wait until the last minute if you
have new images you want me to work on, or want to use my high end
retouching services to improve your jury presentation.
I can prepare your digital jury images for ZAPP, Juried
Art Services, 35mm slides and any other image format requirement,
including preparing a CD for you to submit for those few shows asking for
one.
And a reminder. Working with Chris Maher, we build web
sites for artists. A list of our
artist clients can be found on this web page |
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