The County Fair

[DownByFive]

So the fair isn't until August, but I'm thinking about entering. I've heard that some fairs are pretty picky about digital photos though...I don't do any serious manipulation, probably not much more than is done to print film anyways. Has anyone here entered a fair or anything like that? I just think it'd be a good way to get a little bit of exposure and maybe it'll give me an incentive to really work on the quality of my shots. I'd love it if you guys shared your experiences...

[jar_e]

I put my pictures in the "Fair" once. It was neat, and the people who I submitted the pictures with gave me a list of categories (extreme digital manipulation was one of the options, but it was closely refrenced to digital art). I picked the category I thought my picture best fit (this case, landscape/scenary) and then they were displayed for the weekend that the fair was on. It was nice exposure, and since I live in such a small town, everybody saw my pictures and commented on them. Of course, I'm sure every place is different, but it was fun, and if you can do it, go ahead and do it, you only live once.

Jared

[another view]

I used to belong to a local camera club, and we set up the photo contests at two county fairs in the area. I wasn't involved in judging, but some photoshop work would be OK. This would include adjusting levels or curves, burning and dodging, spotting out dust, re-sizing, sharpening and global color corrections. Basically, anything you could do in a darkroom was permitted. Manipulated images would have a different background dropped behind the subject or some other composite type of image.

One of the fairs was bigger and tougher than the other, so the competition can vary a lot.

[Chunk]

It's been my experience that the local fair competition expects conventional photos and doesn't deal well with stronger photos that kinda push the envelope. The judges are usually folks who are also judging the 4H kid's photos and are kinda slanted toward teaching developing photographers rather than evaluating art. That's OK by me and I sometimes enter some shots and enjoy going to the judging if possible.

The last time I entered some the judge was quite confused when encountering some of my shots (somehow my fireworks shots weren't considered right for a celebrations/special occasions category) but I was grudingly given a few awards even though the judge was not too sure that my stuff fit in the categories they had. When I enter, I just figure its a chance to have people look at my stuff. It's kinda fun to hang around the exhibit a couple times during the fair and listen to comments on my work and others from the fair goers.

I'd encourage you to enter some shots and attend the judging if allowed. It's inexpensive and family/friends will enjoy seeing your stuff hanging with the other photos. If awards are important to you, you will learn about what they expect and can adapt your shooting to take that style photo if you want. I'd rather hang my good stuff and not worry about the ribbons.

I'm sure there is a lot of variation between individual fairs as the tone can be set by the people running the competition and their feeling toward photography ( the guy that runs ours usually looks at my photos and says"now what the hell is THAT?). I always figure they are probably volunteers and that since I don't care to give the time needed to put on the show, I shouldn't complain (too much) about how it gets done. (I do, however, usually tell the guy that runs our show that the guys in the lab really got the color right in some phot of his, just to keep him off balance.)