thephotographybiz.com

photo credit: evelynishere

Reading one of my favourite blogs this morning “A Photo Editor” who references a piece in Advertising Age by Jeff Goodby on the relevance of Awards in advertising. Jeff asks his audience if they are becoming “award-chasers” rather than producing relevant advertising material that can really impact how people think.

Jeff says:

“We’ve created a system that rewards work that is increasingly unknown to anyone outside the business. We have become connoisseurs of esoterica. And in the process, we’re becoming more about us, and less about changing the world.

We are becoming irrelevant award-chasers.”

I think there is a very strong relevance for photographers in this message too.

Photography awards themselves are becoming increasingly irrelevant as they focus in on themselves instead of promoting the commercial viability of the photographers who enter. It’s a vicious circle. To get an award photographers may copy previous year’s styles thus not actually shooting like they’d be commissioned to shoot or even entering a commissioned piece of work. They are following a trend. There are numerous examples if you look hard enough of award winners with amazing images whose normal portfolio is totally different, totally commercial – which is what they get paid to produce. IMHO Photo Awards don’t seem to reflect our day to day industry.

Awards mechanisms themselves can appear to have an inflated ego e.g. the AoP don’t give out all their Gold, Silver or Bronze awards each year. A team of judges decide whether an image is worthy of a place in the top three. Is that pretentious? Is that realistic? Is that self-defeating?

Surely those who enter awards do it to try and gain more or better work. Or do they? Does vanity have a big part to play?

The sheer amount of awards to enter invitations (check your email boxes) have shot up tenfold in the last couple of years. No doubt fuelled by the apparent willingness of lemming-like scared-they’re-not-hip-any-longer photographers to throw $50 entry fees away like confetti at a wedding; and for what? The chance to be in a “book” of unknown (or at least unverified) circulation around the industry.

Some Awards of course are long established, but there’s a number of “who the hell are they?” types hanging to their coat tails, sending multiple emails promising recognition and fame and this number is increasing.

You are likely being judged by people you’ve never heard of and you will be forgotten as soon as the winners are announced (or at least once there’s a gap of a couple of months before the next “call for entries” arrives. Tell me the name of the winner of (insert famous award) last year in the (insert category) without Googling it?

A Photo Award in the Web 2.0 age is a pinprick in the sea of images, websites, tweets, blogs et al that an art buyer or creative director sees on a daily basis. The dilution is so strong I doubt they’d remember the award a month on, let alone a year.

Of course the publicity surrounding the “call for entries” and the almost inevitable “call for entries extension” (i.e. we haven’t made enough entry fees to clear our projected profits) far outweighs the publicity given to the actual results and award winners themselves.

Don’t wait for the phone to ring the morning after. The actual financial tangible benefits of paying to enter these “industry awards” can be measured in single dollars – if that.

We’ve not even covered here the vast number of awards aimed at ripping you of all your copyright and or granting “unlimited rights in perpetuity” i.e. a free RF licence. Bear in mind that you’ve had to pay to enter. Those are on the increase too and they’re often aimed at amateurs and the “copyright unaware“. It’s like taking candy off a baby.

So, what are awards really worth? Only you can decide.

Kudos for the insecure? Comfort blanket for the unloved? I say give your $50 to charity – they need it more.

PP