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At least here in the greater Seattle area, summer is the time for community festivals, most sponsored through the Seafair organization. And where there’s a festival, there’s generally a juried art show or festival attached.
The routine for these art shows is pretty much the same everywhere: artists submit their work (generally three pieces, although some shows go as high as five). The submitted works are then "juried" by a judge from outside the organization, who usually selects which artworks make the cut and are displayed, and always picks a series of prizewinners from among those picked for the show. Artists are asked to list a price for each work displayed, and, on occasion (rare occasion, from my experience), works will sell at the show, with the organizing art association taking a commission that can range from 10% to 30%.
Now, I've had more than my share of such shows under my belt, and I think I'm getting the hang of it. I'm now getting far more of my work displayed, and picking up the occasional prize. So, I think I'm in a position to offer some hints to other photographers ready to play the festival game.
I. Judges are not like the rest of us
With few exceptions, the judges brought in to jury the exhibition will be art (not photography-specific) experts and curators from the artistic establishment of the nearest large city or university. And here's the dirty little secret: most of them hate nature photography. In fact, some may come with a built-in bias against photography in general. ("It's not real art!") But you can count on most of them having a strong prejudice against any nature image, whether landscape or wildlife, where they can rationalize it as "you don't need any artistic talent to take that picture -- just find a good location and press the shutter button" -- in other words, as the work of a "snapshot taker." (No matter how infuriating that may be to those of us who know how much thought, effort, and inspiration it takes to make a good nature image, that's the way they will look at it.) What judges are looking for is something unusual, different, imaginative, even if it doesn't really classify as good nature photography.
For example, here are the three images I've been submitting with some regularity to shows this year. Can you guess which one gets picked far more often, for both selection and prizes, than the others?
1.
2.
3.
If you guessed number three, congratulations! You have a good grasp of the workings of a contest judge's mind. It always amuses me that, when all three images make it into a festival, most of the favorable comments from the audience will be for the first two images, but the judge's pick will always be the third.
The trick, of course, is to make sure that your submissions include at least one highly "distinctive" or "arty" image, even if you personally prefer that classical landscape or wildlife photograph you're also submitting. It may be the only one picked; on the other hand, it might encourage the judge to pick more of your submissions, since you've "proved" to him or her that you're not just a "snapshot taker."
2. Pick your spots
Oftentimes, you'll find the festival to which you're submitting has several different categories. Generally, there may be a "main show" and a "little" or "salon" show, distinguished by a limit on size or asking price. Since all of your photos may meet the aforementioned restrictions, and all categories will be juried, doesn't it make sense to submit them all to the "little" show, especially since the entry fee will probably be lower?
There's just one problem: all entries in one specific category will be juried together, while those in different categories will be juried at different times. Now, suppose you're in a very popular show, which has received, say, three hundred entries, and has only space to display one hundred of them. The judge knows in advance that he or she has to screen out two of every three entries. He or she comes upon your selection of three photographs. What is going to happen? You've got it -- most likely, he or she will pick the one of your images he or she likes best, and reject the others. Whereas, if you'd entered one of those three in the other category, that category might have been juried (and your image selected) already, and when the judge comes upon your two entries in this category, he or she may well be tempted to pick one at least of the two, since the "pick one of the three" principle won't be so obvious.
3. Check your "sell-by date"
Most festivals I know of require that all art be produced in the last two years. That means, essentially, that each of your photos has a limited lifespan on the festival circuit. Given that, if you're picking three to five of your images, it makes sense to favor the earlier images, since you won't get a chance to submit them again. Let me give you an example: if it's 2009, and you have a series of worthy images taken in 2007, 2008, and earlier in 2009, it makes no sense whatsoever to enter the images taken earlier this year, since you'll have the chance to enter those again in 2010 and 2011. However, with the 2007 images, it's a case of "use it or lose it" -- if you don't submit those this time, you won't get another chance. (In the case of the images I included above, two of them are from 2007 and the other from 2008, so the later one -- number two, in this case -- can, and probably will, be entered again next year.)
4. Go big
A secret about how artwork is displayed at these festivals: unlike a full gallery exhibit at, say, the Museum of Modern Art (or even a small downtown commercial gallery), you're not going to get all your artwork grouped together in a prominent place. (Count on your photos being displayed far away from each other, especially if they only make sense when viewed together!) Generally, the way art is displayed is that a series of portable "gallery walls" is set up, and the largest artwork is hung first, with the smaller pieces filling up the blank space once that's done. You can probably guess what that means -- smaller photos will get short-shrift. (I'll always remember my first show, when I naively submitted 8x10s, and found them scattered around at about knee-level or squeezed in between larger artwork that was getting all the attention.) Nowadays, I print my photographs out to 12x18 (the largest I can print on my Epson) and frame them at 18x24. That size will generally result in getting my photographs displayed in a favorable position; nonetheless, if I had a printer capable of going much larger, I would do so.
5. Price it right
Generally, artwork doesn't sell at festivals, but, if yours is lucky enough to do so, remember that the sponsoring organization will take their commission off the top. What this means is that, if you're used to selling that framed print for $299, you can count on taking home only $210 to $270 once the commission is subtracted. If that $299 price is important to you, you need to remember to raise your festival price to take account of the commission. Of course, if you're already selling the same image on your website for $299, you might find the sponsors not happy about trying to compete with your online sales; in which case you may have no choice but to bite the bullet, keep the price at $299 and accept the lower take from the sale. Incidentally, if you think that's bad, wait until you have the similar situation with a gallery, where the commission is usually around 50%!
I'm sure that there are many other tricks to the "festival game" that I have yet to learn myself, but these pointers should give you a good start toward "winning" at that game...at least, doing so a lot more than I did when I first started playing!