​Sometimes I’m asked how to have one’s photographs or scanographs considered for exhibitions.  A clearinghouse for exhibition sponsors exists in CaFE’:  www.callforentry.org.  Anyone can request periodic emails announcing fine art competitions that will be received well in advance of entry dates.  Directions are found at the CaFE’ website.  This system is used for all kinds of art competitions offered by small, nonprofit organizations, by exclusive, private galleries, and even by cities and states.
 
For example, the longest operating art fair in Washington is the Kingston Arts Festival.  Kingston is a tiny community on the Puget Sound.  It is best known as one of the few ports offering ferry boat service to Seattle.  Wait times during busy summer weekends for vehicle transport can reach two hours.  As with other ferries, “walking on” is easy but if you want or need to take a vehicle, that’s a different matter. 
 
I had two photos juried into Kingston’s Art Festival during two successive Festivals when I lived on the Olympic Peninsula.  Neither photo sold but that is not uncommon for this particular art fair.

​“End of the Line” is one image I captured through an Amtrak window.  It is one of my favorites.  After seeing the scene for the first time just west of Shelby, Montana, I was determined to have my camera ready when it came into view on the next Amtrak trip through Montana.  Actually, I captured images the next few trips going east and going west.  On my last trip, I was saddened to see age and weather had taken their toll on the structure and the structure had become merely a pile of boards.  I suppose this was bound to happen so felt gratitude that I was able to capture the scene before it became impossible.

​When I first visited Iargo Springs years ago, there was a vertical dirt path to the Springs that presented quite a challenge.  Since then the U.S. Forest Service has installed a 294 step stairway down to the Springs.  (https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/hmnf/recarea/?recid=18990)
The stairway makes it a cleaner journey but just about as difficult.  On my first trip down the stairway to the Springs I kept reminding myself that the exertion necessary on the return trip to the parking lot would more than double the effort of climbing the 134 steps to the tallest lighthouse on the Great Lakes that the public can climb, the New Presque Isle Lighthouse in my home community.
 
At the bottom of the stairway, landscaping borders and a log wall engineer the descending water to fall in such a way that erosion is minimized.  This area is about thirty feet from the bank of the famous AuSable River into which the Springs empty.  The “Iargo Springs” image juried into the Kingston Art Festival has been significantly cropped.  This adds to the visual effect of capturing “one moment in time” as the swiftly moving water falls in front of the stationary wall.
 
The Iargo Springs have been revered for centuries by indigenous groups.  It offended my sensitivities to see someone walking within the man-made waterfall barriers near the AuSable in order to fill plastic jugs to take some of the water home.  But who am I to judge?  Many consider this water emerging from behind the earth’s surface to be pure and holy.    

​My first formal introduction to photography skills was provided by a couple from Omena, Michigan, who formed the organization “Saving Birds Thru Habitat”.  The classes took place in 1998 in the Art Center across the street from my office in the five-story State Office Building at the Traverse City Commons.
 
The most memorable thing I learned in those classes is now obvious to me.  Readers of English text read from the upper left hand corner of a page to the lower right corner.  A visual tracking of visual art, such as a photo or a painting, that follows this direction will generally be less interesting to a viewer than a photo that draws one’s attention in the opposite direction.  For an example, look again at the photo of the Hurricane Ridge Trail on the Introduction page of this website.
 
Ten years later when I was a few weeks from retiring in 2008 I attended a photography lecture by Wayne Pope.  It took place in the Leland [MI] Library, as I recall.   At the conclusion of his talk, Wayne encouraged those in attendance to participate in a several day workshop in Presque Isle across the state.  Wow.  This was exactly the location where I was to move in a couple weeks.
 
It proved to be a fantastic workshop and I learned more than I could have hoped.  Further, Wayne has become a personal friend and a great photography mentor.   I might have remained a photography novice were it not for Wayne’s encouragement and advice. 
 
Before I began learning from Wayne, I had become aware of scanography.  This is the art of creating digital images using a flat bed scanner that I will explain in a subsequent blog post.  When one of my earliest scanographs was juried into a Besser Museum Fine Arts Exhibition in 2009, Wayne was there to capture the moment.  It was the first time a photo or scanograph of mine was publicly recognized. My gratitude for Wayne’s photography assistance and his friendship is beyond measure.  

It is three days after the 4th of July today.  Please excuse my delay but I want to share this photo.  It is the only photograph I have "sold".  It had been juried into the annual Photography Exhibition of the Crooked Tree Art Center in Petoskey in 2012.  Actually the CTAC sold it, providing  me with a 40% commission.  I believe it sold for $125.

The photo was taken at the July 4th celebration in 2011 at Bay Harbor, a resort community just a couple miles west of Petoskey overlooking the Little Traverse Bay of Lake Michigan.  The celebration is always scheduled a couple days prior to Petoskey's own celebration which occurs on the 4th.  I have attended only this one July 4th celebration at Bay Harbor and was with a harpist friend who is now deceased.  It was so late when I returned home from the fireworks that I was bleary eyed and slow to articulate anything.  I was pulled over by a sheriff's deputy at 2:30AM.  He looked at my drivers license and commented, "Why, you live only a couple miles from here!"  I explained that I was "returning from the Charlevoix [not even a little correct] July 4th Fireworks."  That's how clearly I was thinking.  If he realized it was only the night of July 2nd/3rd, he didn't ask me to explain and let me proceed with a gentle warning.  I suppose I could have asked him to explain why he was out driving around at 2:30 in the morning in our little, quiet, peaceful community.

I had little hope that the photo would sell after I examined all the other photos in the exhibition. Many had been submitted by professional photographers.  The exhibit ended at noon on the last day of the exhibition.  I appeared in the early afternoon to pick up my photo.  I walked through the double doors to the exhibit hall and looked to my right since I had seen the photo proudly hanging there on a couple previous visits.  Imagine my shock when it was not where it was supposed to be while all the other photographs appeared to be untouched.  This was about two hours after the exhibit ended!  I hurried out of the hall to tell the receptionist that someone must have already taken the photo by mistake....while not thinking to ask myself how likely THAT would have been!  The receptionist calmly explained that a man had been there around 11AM to buy it.  Unbelievable.  And to this day, it is the only photo I (have had) sold.