I recently became aware (courtesy of the New York Times) of kickstarter.com, a Brooklyn-based online community that attempts to match artists and creative thinkers with interested patrons to support their projects. Judging by the popularity of this relatively young micropayment model, this seems like a smart way to bring people together to realize a creative goal (and sometimes lifelong dream)

The founders of Kickstarter do not receive any money from the projects or seek creative rights. Project creators can offer numerous incentives to solicit patron donations, including artwork.

While Kickstarter requires that the financial goal be met in order for any funds to be disbursed, there is ample potential to exceed donation expectations. Artist Laura Kicey, for example, set out to raise $350 to go to Iceland and take photos. She offered prints of her excursion for anyone who helped sponsor the trip, and ended up raising $1630!

On a larger scale, FOUND magazine co-creator Jason Bitner teamed up with Emmy-nominated editor and director Joe Beshenkovsky, to create a documentary film based on found studio portraits of the populace of LaPorte, Indiana by photographer Frank Pease. The film, based on Bitner's previously published book of the photographs, will share the stories of this tight-knit American community. Their goal to raise $7,500 was greatly exceeded (to the tune of $12,153) with pledges made in exchange for original photographs, caricatures, VIP tickets to the premiere, and even a "song portrait" sung to you by their super musician friend.

This past January one of our own 20x200 artists and Hey, Hot Shot! panelists, Kent Rogowski launched Scaffold (announced here earlier), a non-profit that also supports emerging and mid-career artists by rewarding fellowships. With Scaffold, Kent intends to create an artists-helping-artists environment whereby the community essentially serves itself. Lots of small contributions, made by donations and application fees, aggregate to provide the award. Fellowships are awarding in the continuous bi-monthly schedule and unlike Kickstarter there is no time limit for pledging donations. Also, Scaffold is specifically geared toward painters, sculptors, photographers and new media artists, making this art funding from within the art world itself.

All this reminded me of Youngna and Sara's SXSW2010 panel proposal about supporting artists through social networking. Whether your project is big or small, social media networking can really promote and support artists, while also reaching a mass audience that is not exclusive to the art world. This is yet another innovative, web-enabled way to spread creativity — and another great funding opportunity for all you creative people with big ideas.

Second in our blog-mini-series about self-publishing is an interview with esteemed photographer, best-selling 20x200 edition-maker and acclaimed self-publisher,Beth Dow. A few months ago, there was an extremely well done interview with Beth in Macworld UK, that covered lots of bases, but we sent her some burning questions of our own:

Tell me about your book.
I received a generous fellowship from the McKnight Foundation several years ago to make most of these pictures. I lived in London for many years, and grew to love the sense of quiet confusion, and occasional danger, of these unusual landscapes. I never think of gardens as pretty places. At least not the gardens I choose to visit. This book invites the viewer to lose themselves in landscapes that are confounding yet beautiful.

Why did you want to put together a book?
Every single photograph I have ever made has been with the hope that it would be part of a book. Yes, I know that's a little pathetic. Holding a book can be a much more intimate experience than viewing a photograph in a gallery. I love the physical nature of books, and they just smell so good! I was that freak in elementary school who sniffed the new textbooks.

I put together my Blurb book in very little time as an exercise in sequencing and curiosity about the software. I think I have a good eye for design, as well as some experience with typography, and was stuck on my ass with a freshly broken ankle. The Photography.Book.Now deadline was looming and so I gave it a stab. I was thrilled with the result. Like most photographers, I'm used to the letter that begins, "Competition was fierce this year, and we regret . . ."

It's no secret that print-on-demand has pretty weak profit margins for content producers and most print-on-demand books only ever sell a few copies or are created as promotional giveaways. Did winning the competition result in significant profits from the sale of your book?
I don't get a huge amount from a sale, but I have sold more books than I anticipated.

Who is your audience?
These garden pictures have different crossover appeal from my other work. I hope gardeners, Anglophiles, and other dark souls will understand the work, and that people who are not regular fans of landscape photographs will change their minds about what a carefully considered and articulated environment can be. Americans tend to think gardens are where we keep the pretty flowers. I'm not interested in such places, and flowers are rarely in my work.

How is putting together a book of photography different from putting together an exhibition?
It depends on the book, I suppose. A print-on-demand book can be re-sequenced and re-designed as often as you like. A published book is set in stone, and that finality must be deliciously comforting. My photographs have hung in many different kinds of venues, and I love how the special demands of each space affects the relationships between images.

Did you look at other options? Why did you choose Blurb?
What were my other options? I still want a publisher for this work, and all of my other projects as well! I chose Blurb because of the fantastic competition and its stellar judging panel. [I] then made the book as an exercise and love the resulting book. I'm still very open to completely changing the format and design, and want, most of all, for it to be printed by a fine press on gorgeous paper. How could I not want that? The original prints are handmade in platinum, on lovely paper. The physicality of a photograph is integral to my work, and I always say photographs are three-dimensional objects rather than 2-D images.

It seems like everyone I know has publishers falling all over themselves, and two more friends announced their new books just this week. I haven't learned that secret handshake. If you know it, please tell me. There is nothing I want more than for a publisher to express interest in my photographs, but I have yet to crack that code. My Fieldwork project was recently one of the top six finalists for the Critical Mass book award, so I was in with a chance for a little while, at least.

What was the process like? What took the longest?
This book design really was a fluke. It's more quiet and conservative than me, but I went with the requirements of the images. I spent most of a day putting together a completely different project (Fieldwork) but didn't like the way those square images sat on the rectangular page. No matter how I re-sized the images and moved them around, I just wasn't happy, and I would love those to be printed in a huge square slab.

Out of frustration, I switched to the garden pictures simply because they are slightly rectangular, and went with that. This was around 2 days before the entry deadline, so I had no time to second-guess myself. My design instincts are usually good, and I only run into trouble when I have a lot of time to over-think things.

What is your biggest problem with self-publishing? How long did it take to make?
My biggest problem is that people seem to assume it was my goal all along. Instead, it was an invaluable tool to mess around with sequencing and to make me feel I was actually getting somewhere. Absolute instant gratification. It took me 2 1/2 days, start to finish. Did I mention the Percocet from my orthopedic surgeon? Might have helped.

Do you plan to self-publish in the future?
Sure. It's a great way to throw together a sequence and see what happens, and I like that an artist can also just order a single book and not offer copies for sale. I also might shoot some pictures exclusively for a Blurb book project. I see those book ideas as tangential, however. There is nothing I want more than a publisher who really loves and understands the possibilities of well-made book to take a risk with me.

What's your favorite photo book?
That answer changes all the time, so I won't even begin to throw titles at you.

What things are important to consider when creating your own photo book?
Know what you like, but be willing to do what's right for the images. If your favorite picture doesn't play well with others, let it sit this one out. Decide from the start if the book is all about the pictures or all about clever design, and don't think one of those choices is necessarily better than the other. I tend to prefer books that facilitate my experience with the photographs and eschew noise.

Clever-clogs typography usually pisses me off, and I just dislike it when a book looks like it was designed by a hired [hand] that didn't understand the images. This isn't to say I don't like bold design, though, and a good example would be my friend Chris Shaw's stunning book, Life as a Night Porter, from Twin Palms.

from Life as a Night Porter by Chris Shaw

Attention-getting design that is a natural companion to the images is an amazing thing to see. Look at the stunning things John Gossage makes. Mercy me! And please don't forget that the cover is important. In some odd way, it can be the most important because it has the most power to lure a person to pick it up. Or, of course, to ignore it altogether.

What advice do you have to photographers self-publishing their own books?
First of all, understand why you want a book. There are so many good reasons, and not all involve aesthetic issues. For example, a book might function as a kind of catalog for a project. In this case, like the best web sites, the design will get the hell out of the way of the images.

Another kind of book might require a bigger experience, and use color, typography, scale or texture to transform the context of the images. Keep looking at books to learn what you like and dislike. Self-publishing through a print-on-demand house only costs you the price of a single copy. If you hate it, no big deal. Keep going until you get it right or accept it's a pile of crap and move on. If you're not confident in your design skills, find someone who can help you. Maybe you can barter some prints or copies of the book as payment. Just make something that you can love.

So concludes another post. Don't miss Beth's beautiful and award-winning book, In the Garden. Check back next week for an interview with Alan Rapp.

A few weeks ago, we got an email from our 2006 Ultra and 20x200 edition-maker, Alison Grippo, letting us know that she had just self-published her first book: CHASING: The Friday Night Fights NYC using Blurb.com. Intrigued, we sent Alison a few questions about her self-publishing process:

Tell me about your book.
It's a documentary about the fighters from The Friday Night Fights NYC. It's funny, I was looking through it and it actually does not have any photos of people hitting each other. I heard about the fights from a friend a few years ago and I thought, "Wow, men fighting in the basement of a church...who doesn't want to photograph that?"

I was completely in the dark about the sport, about this particular group, all of it; I just thought, "Holy spectacle." After the first fight, I realized that I had happened upon something that was easy to judge but not so easy to understand. At that point, I just wanted to keep photographing the fights, and the man who runs the show, Justin, was kind enough to let me come a few times. By the third fight, I knew that I wanted to do something bigger than just a few photos. I had proclaimed, "I'm going to do a book about this!" without really knowing what it means to create a book, a body of work, etc.

That seems to be how I operate though, I go way in above my head and then push to figure it out and make it happen because I said I would do it. Also, in working with everyone, from the trainers to the boxers, it became more of a requirement than a goal. Here were people that were working hard for something with the same odds as the lottery—how could they go unknown?

Why did you want to put together a book?
For boxing at least, it's a narrative. I lean more towards documentary work probably because I'm a nosy little brat...

I feel that all the photos [in the book] are required to get the story across, they work together, they share the overall point. There are some photos I have which I think capture a particular portion of what I wanted to say, but only when coupled with the rest is the story really told...

The point of the book (once I figured out the point) is not to show the dirt or the primal aspect of fighting that people immediately assume, it was to show the nobility of it, the beauty of the fighters and the scene, the character it takes to really be a fighter and stand up in a ring with another man who you respect and admire with the idea that you are there to best him. Part of why it's a book is because I can't explain it in words but I think I can explain it in photos. I hope I did—certainly the people involved deserve that.

How is putting together a book of photography different from putting together an exhibition?
Volume for sure. I couldn't do a show of 70 images just about boxing. Maybe I could but I don't think it would be as effective. In the end, I want people to own the whole collection even if there are some photos which don't resonate for them because it is meant to be seen as a whole.

As an exhibition, I think I'd have to do a lot a more of telling the tale behind some of the images because they could be out of context. Then again, I've had the luck of seeing some of the images at 20"x30" and the impact is completely different.

Did you look at other options? Why did you end up choosing Blurb?
I had a few options, some small places were genuinely interested in releasing the book and some independent publishers too but photo books are a rough business. I don't think you do it to make a living, unless of course you're a collective like Magnum, or you're Annie Leibovitz or Vanity Fair.

I didn't want to do a book that was a limited edition and super expensive. That did not fit with the topic, the purpose or the spirit of what I was doing. Most of those interested in working with the book wanted to do very selective, limited releases. I didn't spend the last 2+ years shooting this because I wanted 500 people to own it, I wanted people to know who these boxers were, I wanted people to see what I saw. I had already invested so much of myself in the project that the idea of not making this as available as possible was counter-intuitive. Then there is the fact that I'm not exactly Annie Leibovitz and there won't be a hoard of people rushing to grab my retrospective on boxing.

I chose Blurb for a couple of reasons. If I did it through Blurb, then I had to really own it and finish it. I had to edit it and take that last step in the process of creating this story. I like that I can I say it's 100% what I wanted; of course, if it sucks, I prefer people leave me to my own delusions. I'm sure if I had worked with a publisher, issues like how much it costs to print, how many photos I could have, the theme, etc. would have been up for more debate. I didn't want to debate that. I will see how this does as I think it's still pretty costly. I will probably release a less expensive version (smaller, maybe softcover) later on if the interest is there. Again, this is about people learning about boxers like Damon Rowe, or Jamel Spencer, and the more who can, the better.

The other reason is that Blurb runs Photography.Book.Now which gave me a deadline. I need deadlines. I was really motivated by the jury who was looking at the work, and that Beth Dow won last year (and I just love her work, all of it). I'm looking now at all the submissions and another freaky portion of publishing a book online is that you see everyone's everything...

What was the process like? What took the longest?
I made about five versions, so the process was exhausting. The multiple versions came from having to own up to what I wanted to say. One version was about the glory, which was wrong. Another was about the environment, which was totally wrong. Each was a topic that alluded to what I wanted to say but never actually said it because I was afraid. When I finally sucked it up and said to myself, "This is what you're going to focus on," it became easier.

Editing is an amazing learning experience, I've edited words but not photos as much. I've done a few articles and other short pieces with my photography so I'm not totally new to the editing process but taking on something that personal and that large was daunting. At one point, I actually stopped working on the book and started shooting again to avoid having to go through the photos and give myself more to procrastinate with. Going through your own work is brutal, often I just sat there saying, "Wow, wow I'm really horrible, these are awful, what was I thinking?" There was a great deal of self-flagellation, there still is. I gave up a few times. It's like anything else very personal, you're your own worst critic so you have to fight with yourself to just keep going. Wow, that sounds like a self-help platitude.

The longest part was accepting what I was going to be talking about or showing. I have a personal relationship with a lot of people in the book, some very close, and I was very unsure of how they might feel towards me if I did a book that was not the glory tale. This isn't a book about winning, it's about losing. It's about what it means to endure for a dream you will probably not achieve and how phenomenal of a person you become through the process of trying. I didn't want to judge but I had a point of view.

From a purely technical standpoint, having to actually lay it out, pick photos, beg people who I trust to look at it and tell me, "That's a really bad idea," so I could do better was painful. There are a few folks out there who I owe a lot to but want to choke to death for making me delete photos, change the order or rewrite the intro over and over and over again.

What is your biggest problem with self-publishing? How long did it take to make?
The printing. The printing is not exact, so you can print at home and it looks great, then you get the proof and you want to cry. Then you get another proof and even though you've done nothing to the photos, for some reason, they are all green. Black and white printing is no one's specialty, I think. The first proof I received, the cover was bubbly and the blacks on the photo didn't match the black on the book.

I've done a few test prints with Blurb to try and calibrate and I've gotten pretty good at telling what will print well and what won't, but (sorry Blurb 'cause I love you) it's still a bit of a crap shoot. My photos are very high contrast, I like my blacks to be black and my whites super white, sometimes the tones just don't come out through the printing process there. But I haven't seen anyone do it better than Blurb (and I've tested a lot of self-publishers). The premium paper helps exponentially but I'd love it if there was more consistency between what I print and what they print. Such is life.

Who is your audience?
My mom. Oh, who is it intended for, not who do I think is actually going to read it and tell me I'm special? My bad. You know, I didn't think about it. I just thought, someone needs to see this, someone needs to know how hard these men work.

Do you plan to self-publish in the future?
Not a clue. If I can come up with an idea that merits a book, maybe. Right now the idea of doing another book on the heels of just finishing one seems masochistic :)

What's your favorite photo book?
Ack. No idea. I've been searching for an out of print Gilles Peress book which might be my favorite, if I find it. I just went to look at what photo books I own and I can't pick a favorite.

What things are important to consider when creating your own photo book?
Have a point of view, stick to it, and edit edit edit. If you have a great photo that doesn't work with story you're trying to tell, then it isn't right for the book.

What's next for you? What are you working on now?
Right now, sleep is on my radar. I need to just clear my head for a while I think and see what happens next. I haven't taken a photo in a while but I'm going to start carrying the camera around again. I received a great piece of advice once from a super fancy photographer during a portfolio review; he said, "Just when you think you're done, throw it all out and start again, bust it all wide open." That's where I'm at, I need to throw it all out, start again, and see what happens.

Good luck and thanks for taking the time to answer our questions, Alison!
So there you have it! Make sure to check out the preview of Alison's book, CHASING, and then buy a copy or five. Tune in same time next week for an interview with JBG artist, 20x200 edition-maker, self-publisher, and winner of last year's PBN Grand Prize: Beth Dow!

remember to thank all the books you haven't read over the past three years by ailatan

Less than ten years ago, the entire book publishing industry could be summed up in one famous quotation by journalist A.J. Liebling, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one." However, in the last several years, digital print-on-demand self-publishing has grown from an obscure, expensive and low-quality hassle into an accessible, beautiful and worthy pursuit for anybody with a creative edge.

With the rise of digital printing, thousands upon thousands of new print-on-demand books have popped up for sale all over the internet. Maybe it shows just how young I am, but I was shocked to read in an essay by HHS! panelist Darius Himes that, "up until the early 1990s it was easy to purchase every photography book because there were only a handful that were published in any given year." Browsing the thousands of titles in the online bookstore at Blurb.com is a sign of the times that this is certainly not the case today.

Within this absolute saturation of photography books are many worth a look and certainly some worth having on your shelf. In the next few weeks, we'll be publishing a few posts featuring interviews and advice from some of our favorite self-publishing Hot Shots, artists and bookmakers. Stay tuned!

If you've got stories, links or advice about self-publishing that you want to share, don't hesitate to leave a comment or send a reply to @heyhotshot on Twitter.

We've been fielding lots of questions about HHS! contenders featured on this very blog and want to address the two most common asks today. The most important thing to know is that the work featured here is selected by the editors of this blog and should not be considered representative of the tastes and views of our esteemed panel.

Hope y'all find this helpful:

Q. If you are not featured on the blog as a contender, does that mean that your photography is not considered for 20x200 editions?

A. No. Each and every photographer who submits work to Hey, Hot Shot! is considered for participation in 20x200. Hey, Hot Shot! is the *only* way photography is reviewed for 20x200 which makes it extra important for us to look at each and every entry. In addition to viewing the three images every photographer has submitted, Ms. Jen Bekman (founder and curator of 20x200) will visit entrants' websites to view more work for potential 20x200 editions. We're thorough (and sneaky!) like that! So, don't be surprised if you don't see your work here and we drop you an email asking if you'd like to participate in 20x200.

Q. If you are not featured as a contender on the blog, does that mean you are not in the running to be a Hot Shot?

A. No. Again, please remember that the selections of the editors of this blog for contenders posts do not necessarily reflect the tastes and considerations of the HHS! panelists. While we love being able to feature a lot of great work here, it's really only a minor introduction to the wealth of work that is submitted by photographers and is carefully considered by our panel.

If you have more questions that are not answered in this post or in our FAQ, please write them in the comments and we'll do our best to answer those too! Thank you!

You only have 18 days left to enter the last round of competition in 2008!

Yes, that's a little more than two weeks but, really, I am STRONGLY advising you: don't put it off. Now (!) is the time to apply. Here's why:

* We have three lovely ladies lined up to post about your work on this very fine blog. Between the three of us, we'll be posting approximately twice per day, Monday through Friday, which means +/- 10 photographers per week will be featured here and getting publicity via lots of traffic on their portfolio sites and/or blogs (just one of the perks of entering, mind you!).
* AND, because we tend to get a LOT of entries attheverylastminute, now that we're all writing regularly, the odds are pretty good that you'll be posted about if you apply soon; at least the odds are better than they will be as we get closer and closer to the deadline.

Really, I just don't want to you to have to add "enter Hey, Hot Shot!" to your list of New Year's resolutions again, right before "floss regularly" and "eat more fruits and vegetables." While you're at it, you'd also have to add, "STOP procrastinating!"

So, cross it off your list. You'll sleep better. I promise.

I am going to guess that if you are reading this you are an "emerging photographer," or someone who is interested in "emerging photography." And if either of those applies to you then you probably already know about Rachel Hulin and her fantastic blogging about photography (emerging and otherwise).

But did you know that Rachel is a Hey, Hot Shot winner? Spring 2005.

Did you know that Rachel has a new blog?

Bookmark it. If you fall into one of the two categories above then hers is one of the most important voices you should be listening to about photography each day.

Untitled (Max) by Fall '05 Hot Shot Dorthe Alstrup

Dear Jen,

The next time you receive a 20x200 newsletter that contains a piece of art you really really want to buy, you need to just buy it. You do not need to first e-mail Jen B. to say, "OMG. I really really love today's 20x200 edition! I am going to buy it right now! XO, Jen S."

When you write notes like that and then click back to 20x200 to buy the edition in question it might be sold out in the size you want. I'm just saying. For next time, remember: purchases first, exclamations second.

Love,
Jen

P.S. I bought this one instead.

Hot Shot Jennifer Boomer's zine The Uncommon Vantage Point

Fall '07 Hot Shot Jennifer Boomer makes a zine, The Uncommon Vantage, and it was featured in the July issue of PDN. The zine includes images from Boomer's Dutch Harbor, Alaska adventures. Each is Ssgned and numbered and includes a 4X6 C-Print and a "cute" sticker designed by Leslie at Pancake Meow.

The PDN article, titled, "The New Portfolio" explains that, "Photographers are marketing themselves online and in print to potential clients in all kinds of new and interesting ways that are more portable and less expensive than traditional portfolios." It cites Boomer's zine as a particularly interesting mode.

The article, by Jay Mallin details:

"Smaller printing projects--still larger than the traditional promo postcards--are gaining some attention as well. Jennifer Boomer (28 and currently traveling, according to her MySpace entry) created a new portfolio by moving to Alaska and, photographing while working for a few months in a fish-processing plant. When she was done, she created a 'zine' to present her work to potential buyers.

As zines go, it's definitely upscale, with four-color reproduction and professional design in place of mimeographed monochrome. She sent it to 125 people she'd like to work with, from reps to editors to gallery owners. Again, no immediate jobs, but Boomer says she got a good response. "I felt like it was a good, positive step."

'I remember Jennifer's booklet, and I still have it,' reports Anne Lyse Tardivat, an editor with Agence Vu in Paris. 'I rarely receive such material. I guess it's not in the European style--yet.'"

anhm #30 by Hot Shot and Ultra Joseph O. Holmes

Without fail, each batch of Hey, Hot Shot! entries includes work made inside the American Museum of Natural History. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. We love the museum too. Just a fun fact. And maybe something to keep in mind when shooting. Those scenes have probably been shot before. If you must shoot there, make it work in your own way. (Another day we will discuss shopping carts, for you seem to also really love shopping carts.)

My favorite example of AMNH work is from Fall '05 Hot Shot and Fall '06 Ultra Joeseph O. Holmes. His diorama series is splendid, and can be found on 20x200 as well. (There is only one print of this edition left!)

The Museum itself recently launched an online portal into its own archives of photographs, "Picturing the Museum: Education and Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History." It is worth a look.

Shoot The Blog reprints a great Sugimoto quote about the dioramas:

"Upon first arriving in New York in 1974, I did the tourist thing. Eventually I visited the Natural History Museum, where I made a curious discovery: the stuffed animals positioned before painted backdrops looked utterly fake, yet by taking a quick peek with one eye closed, all perspective vanished, and suddenly they looked very real. I'd found a way to see the world as a camera does. However fake the subject, once photographed, it's as good as real." - Hiroshi Sugimoto

Remember that talk about websites? I still don't have all the answers. But I have a good example. James Deavin, a Summer '05 Hot Shot, has a great website and a great blog. James's last post, by chance, is about website redesign. He writes, in general, with a candid honesty that is refreshing. It is nice to see his daily snaps so close to his carefully edited portfolio projects.

And there are gems like this, ". . .using a camera/phone hybrid. These devices mean you can more easily ask your friends for advice on composition-related dilemmas." I never thought of the cameraphone that way before. Brilliant.

You've done the hard part: you make great photographs, you have folders full of images on your hard drive, piles of prints. Now it's time to share your work with the world. The number one tip I have for Hey, Hot Shot! entrants is: have a website. "Have a great website" is what I actually mean, but "have a website," any website, is a really good first step.

If you are entering a competition with an online-only application, then we already know that you have internet access. And, really, that is all you need to start a website to promote/present your work. One really simple way of putting your work online is Flickr. Flickr is a tool for sharing photos. You can sign up for an account, use their easy Uploader, and then organize your photos. You can present different projects in different sets and collections of sets. You can title your photos and provide descriptions. You can even choose privacy levels to protect who sees and doesn't see your work.

Another well-designed and incredibly easy-to-navigate site for making sites is Tumblr. Sign up for a free Tumblr account and then post your all your photos. The templates are clean and the dashboard is so easy to use. For a blogging site, it is definitely photographer-friendly. I have a regular website and I also have a Tumblr; it's that good.

Ready for something with a few more steps? Register a domain and program a website. Guides to web design are infinite, templates exist, and you could always either barter for design work or hire a great designer who gets what you're going for. This option is not as scary as it sounds.

Buying a domain and programming it yourself leads to my second tip. I look through applications, I sat in the room as our fabulous panel screened submissions, I've talked to a million people who look at photographers' websites, all of whom agree: do not use Adobe Flash. Flash has its uses, but your portfolio should not be one of them. To oversimplify: it is very, very annoying. Your photographs should be strong enough that I never need them to fly across the screen, or pop up, or dance.

My last tip is applicable to every website option above. Edit your work. Regardless of the platform you choose, the actual photographs and sequence of photographs is, by far, the most important thing. In a Hey, Hot Shot! application you choose three photos in a feat of editing that is difficult at best. On your website, show your stuff, but figure out how much to show. Try different numbers and arrangements. Think about the structure of work in terms of telling a story to your viewer. How much should you tell? Don't give away too much, but be sure to tell the whole story. How many stories do you need to tell, or how many bodies of work do you want to showcase? What caption information is necessary? It's important to think about the constraints of internet viewing as well. How many pages will someone scroll through, or how many thumbnails will someone open? Subtract a few from whatever number you first guess. Ask your friends where they really stopped clicking. Check your site stats to see what pages people look at, and spend the most time on. In an ideal world, you would edit your work in a way that promotes finishing it all.

There is more to website design, and to photographer's websites, of course. I'm certainly not the authority. But some other quick tips: make your name and contact information clear, consider a bio, a c.v., a statement. Edit everything for grammar. Keep it simple. No flash!

Here's where we really get into it. Inside Hey, Hot Shot! Yiftach Belsky entered this competition, just like, I hope, you have, or will. He selected three images and wrote a brief statement and I found it all earlier today, while looking through entries, while combing for Contenders. Belsky's three images were strong, and his statement intriguing, but it felt like something was missing. Like there had to be more to it than what I was seeing. And there is more, and because he has a super website, I can see it. A lot more. Great images. A more complete picture, entire stories even.

So, DO be sure to include your website when you enter. If you don't have one, make one. Not just for us, obviously, but because there are people out there, people like me, who want to pour through more.

Untitled (snow-trees) from the series "Broken Cinema" by Chris Bennett

In Chris Bennet's entry statement, he first quotes Jonas Mekas, which is nice, but tells me far less about his passion than his own great explanation that follows.

“It is not my business to tell you what it is all about. My business is to get excited about it, to bring it to your attention. I am a raving maniac of cinema. I capture what I see with my eyes into my camera, and in doing so, I use all my body – not only my eyes but my brain, my heart and each and every cell in my body. In addition, I think both memory and oblivion are important. Filming is a contradiction; I am very much stressed and focused at the very moment of shooting, but at the same time, it is a very relaxed moment.” -Jonas Mekas

This quote both captures how I feel about artist statements and how I truly feel about my work, but I know I can't get get away with that so here is what I have to say. ...

"Broken Cinema" contains images with a forward motion and a passing of time similar to that of a cinematic projection. Through these extended sequences of still images I hope to create an experience that could be considered cinematic in conception.

I'm not wagging a finger, but this is a good lesson, entrants: your words are really important. It's your statement. We want to hear what you have to say.

A few weeks ago, Rob Haggart at A Photo Editor put out a call for work. He curated a slideshow meant to forge new relationships between photographers, photo editors, and art collectors. It's up now, on his blog, and with an embed code so that others can host the show too. It's called I Like These Photos (to the point, perfect), and it features the work of 297 (!) photographers. It's a novel way of collecting images, for sure.

He writes:

Attention art buyers and photo editors, this is a free promo that’s meant to supplement all the other ways you find photographers to hire. I created it see if there might be an easier more efficient way to quickly look at 200-300 photographers. Compared to the weekly promo pile this works pretty good. Plus, if you’re like me, you remember a picture and not necessarily who took it so you can come back to this slideshow and find the name and website of the photographer whenever you like. This project only works if you find work you like and hire the photographer. I can create more of these but it’s a complete waste of time if it doesn’t connect buyers with photographers. That’s the only reason I did this.

Are you a photographer who missed out this time? Don't worry, Haggart promises, "we’re going to do this again with different editors in a couple months."

Have you done your taxes yet? Have you had your taxes done for you yet? One day to go, and yet, there's still hope. "Business of Art: Taxing Artists," a New York Foundation for the Arts article, has some great information that's relevant to photographers and other artists. For example, "...artists should also be aware of what is known as a Un-Incorporated Business Tax. If someone is a freelance artist doing a portion of their business in New York City, there is a tax form they have to complete in addition to their federal, state and city tax returns."

Winter '07 Hot Shot Mickey Smith

Why visit one gallery, when you can visit 75+ all at once? The AIPAD Photography Show runs today through Sunday at the Park Avenue Armory. "More than 75 of the world's leading fine art photography galleries will present a wide range of museum quality work by contemporary, modern and 19th century masters at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City," says AIPAD.

"AIPAD is dedicated to creating and maintaining high standards in the business of exhibiting, buying and selling photographs as art. Acting as the collective voice of the art photography dealers that make up its membership, AIPAD maintains ethical standards, promotes communication within the photographic community, encourages public appreciation of photography as art, concerns itself with the rights of photographers and collectors, and works to enhance the confidence of the public in responsible photography. AIPAD members provide a wide range of services to the public, such as exhibitions, appraisals, expert opinions and consultations."

And while an armory full of exhibitors can feel like overload, it's also a great chance to quickly visit with some people you might not usually have the time (or the access) to see.

By Rachel Hulin, shown in the Hey, Hot Shot! Spring 2005 Showcase

Rachel Hulin at Shoot the Blog has done all of the hard work for you. She's compiled a list of opportunities -- competitive, fellowship, grant, publishing -- open right now to photographers like you. It's an exhaustive list, so, seriously, you should really thank her. And report back on your progress.

P.S. More info about our own competition, Hey, Hot Shot!, coming soon.

P.P.S. Hulin, herself, is a Hot Shot; she showed in Spring '05, our very first show.

• Former Jen Bekman intern Jane Tam is selling inexpensive prints of her photos to finance her senior show. Such a simple, brilliant plan. Jane writes,

  "I am currently a senior at Syracuse University, preparing for my BFA Solo Thesis Show on May 3rd. Like many college students, I am immensely in debt from the costs of film, processing, developing, and printing. Frames cost money. Mounting costs money. The space I rented cost money. This is all for a solo show featuring my photographic series on my family. I do not ask my family for money as they are a working class family who struggle enough to put me through a private university. So, any little bit will help me. Thank you! For those who donate $15 or more will receive a 5x7 print in the mail."

  I love Jane's Can I Come Home With You? series. In it she sketches families from found family photographs into images from her own home life. Two great ones from this series are available among the prints in her store.

• I should admit, I do not know how to use Photoshop. It was only after I started shooting regularly on assignment that I figured out how to resize and rename my images before I turned them in to editors. I'm not proud of this. Since then I've been intrigued, but not hooked, each time someone shows me a free, quick-fix type tool. I've played with Picnik, etc., but I still have pages of steps bookmarked for the boring batch operations I must often perform. Last night I signed up to try Photoshop Express, Adobe's new free online version of Photoshop. The flash-based interface is easy to use, and there's even an Auto Correct option and some organizing options. A few minutes of playing with it didn't teach me how to do anything, exactly, but I'm willing to give it a try. Although, if you want to give me a cheap Photoshop tutorial, I'm up for that too.

  
  

• Rob Haggart, A Photo Editor, writes about an exciting new opportunity for free promotion:

  
  

  "I've wanted to do this for awhile and my thinking on the future of photography and photo contests and other things I'm cooking up has gotten me inspired to offer everyone the chance to promote your best work for free by submitting a couple images for a slide show. There's plenty of photo editors and art buyers who are readers and I know they will find it extremely beneficial to view a quick slide show with hundreds of different photographers featuring their best work and I can't think of any other examples where this exists, so here we go.

  There will be a bar for entry and I will edit out any photographs that are a waste of time for potential buyers to look at. I know there are a lot of top shooters who may be wary of submitting their photographs so I'm going to make sure all the work displayed is top notch. You can also remove your images at any time if you don't think I've done a good enough job.

  The purpose of this is to connect photographers with buyers for FREE. That's it. No bullshit. If that doesn't happen to anyone then the project has failed."

  Rob has a good eye, and from this, it seems, a good heart. A no-bullshit approach to connecting shooters and editors seems generous on all fronts. Visit his site for details about how to participate in this Flickr-based image pool.

  
  

• Spring '06 Hot Shot Casey Kelbaugh founded Slideluck Potshow, a slide show and potluck gathering for artists in New York (that has since branched out to other cities too). The next New York event is tomorrow night, Saturday, March 29, at the Chelsea Art Museum. The theme is patterns. Artists of all sorts each get five minutes to show slides of their work while everyone eats and chats.

Sometimes people come by the gallery, introduce themselves, and start talking about how they're planning on entering the upcoming round of Hey, Hot Shot!. I'm always happy to put faces to names of people who have entered the competition. If I'm sweating a deadline, as I so often am, I might not be as attentive and engaged as I'd like to be, so it goes, but this kind of interaction gets to the heart of the matter for me: the whole reason I started the competition is because I really do love looking at new work and meeting and working with emerging photographers. Hey, Hot Shot! allows me to engage in this process regularly in a manageable way.

Anyway, these aspiring Hot Shots usually ask me for some pointers about what kind of work they should submit. My stock answer is this "Think of it like a haiku." Meaning: you get three chances to express something and although each expression might be wildly divergent from the next, there's something that ties them all together. OK, maybe it's kind of corny, but it's how I see it.

Panelist Eliot Shepard was less corny and more specific in his very thoughtful post on the slower.net weblog, Advice for those considering entry into the Hey Hot Shot competition at the Jen Bekman Gallery. His post caused quite a stir a while back - it got Kottke'd and then in turn inspired another post on the Signal vs. Noise blog entitled Art statements, Pitchfork, and fancypants analysis, which was a broader meditation on "fancypants, look-at-me analysis has nothing to do with good art or good rock 'n roll." It was all good stuff, and the discussion threads on both posts are interesting reads. Jen says: check it out.

Also, and for the record, I'm not one for a lot of flowery prose when it comes to statements, but I do like to know what an artist has on their mind when they go about doing what that they do. It's just about that simple.

Photojojo is a quirky and creative photo newsletter edited by an entrepreneurial duo: Amit Gupta and Kara Canal. They keep their readers both entertained and well informed with DIY projects and tips on how to become a proficient digital camera user. All good stuff.

It turns out they've just written a piece entitled "The 7 Best Photo Contests to Enter Today: You're a Star, Now Show the World," and Hey, Hot Shot! was on the list! Damn straight.