PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITIONS

​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.