I checked out the pool and the first photo I viewed was by Sam Jones. It appeared in the January 2007 issue of Time Magazine. Jones also directed the film “I am trying to break your heart” about Wilco.

Not quite sure what you were looking for here. Selecting work by people whose image style everyone is already familiar with seems like a simple enough task.

Was this a contest for pro photographers who already have extensive portfolios? It’s a bit confusing. You said you’d hire the people whose photos are in the pool, and somewhere else you said you wouldn’t hire anyone who’s not already a pro because you have to be sure they’re reliable. So is the pool made up entirely of pros? Was Flickr just the distribution device?

Maybe all this has been asked and answered somewhere. If so I apologize. If someone could point me to a concise explanation of the submission guidelines I’d appreciate it.

Thanks Rob.. And to all of you who had the courage to participate. I look forward to seeing the “final final” so to speak. I’m sure Rob will let us know when it’s “fixed”.

Bruce Hershey

I’ve been more fortunate at the latter than the former.

Having my two shots accepted into this pool is the most flattering piece of professional validation I’ve had since I originally got my first job as a newspaper staff photographer in 1976.

Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

if you didn’t get in, move on and shut up and work out why.

ffsake people.

Jim that’s a fine looking blog.

am i gonna quit? fuck no.

I’m sure there was some exaggeration in that statement, but I wonder how many, without hesitating, chose their newest images as opposed to their most popular or personal favorite? Timing was good for me, I happened to like my 2 latest images.

I also wonder if APE was SERIOUS about seeing “ALL” of our sites, that if he knew the submission was old (no matter the artist name and notoriety), he declined it?

crikey – now a picture of that would surely make the edit somewhere…..

APE, Rodney Smith, Nick Knight, Evgin, the T-Bone and Avedon’s dried and rotten corpse, poring over our photos…….

RDP

My work was not selected. I’m still breathing, still shooting. Rob’s doing something pretty damn cool. If he’s not feeling what you submitted then so be it. Try again in the future.

Thicken your skin folks.

The comments have also been entertaining.

I pretty sure I did not make the final cut, but rejection is a means of inspiration. So is failure. And so are the images.

Rob – earlier on, I posted that the editing would be ‘brutal’. I know you are used to sifting through many images, but I had in mind the entire process – from shear numbers to making hard decisions. And then listening to the angst and anger.

I don’t envy your job – which is why I appreciate the work you put into this.

Thanks

I think the site and this contest have been very inspirational since I joined a few months back. It would be great to begin discussions on solid ways of self advertising / promotions. The quality of one’s eye seems like only half of the full package these days. If there is already a section on the site for that, please advise. Keep up the good work Rob.

Teddy

This started out as an experiment for Rob to try and provide a service to others and he got a large response to his offer. Naturally, not everyone can make the cut, these 550 images were edited down by one man with only his own point of view to go by from over 2600. And that is my main point, Rob is one man, with his own ideas about what makes a photograph good or bad (though with years of professional experience he probably does have a better eye than most for editing). If you put Rob, Rodney Smith, Nick Knight, Terry Richardson, Richard Avedon, and Can Evgin in a room, and charged each one of them with editing down this exact same group of 2600 photos to 500, you would end up with 6 very different edits, and each would be as valid and worthwhile as the others, they would merely have been tempered by different viewpoints and factors of personal taste.

Another thing we are all forgetting is that this is ROB’s blog. he runs the show, and his name is attached to this slideshow just as much as the contributing photographers. And we can expect nothing less than for him to make these decisions based on his own taste and preferences so that this selection and slideshow represents him as an editor.

To address the unprofessional attitude I have seen here among many of my peers let me say that starting a dialogue and discussion is a positive thing, but when that dialogue devolves into petty insults and baiting it loses all of its validity.

Furthermore, to distance yourself from a contest or publication you have submitted to and were rejected by (even if only a single iteration of said contest) by claiming to be too good and talented to be lumped in with what you say is mediocre and boring work is a disservice to all the other photographers who submitted their work, but also a disservice to yourself. If you are so confident in your talent and your work than you should learn to either a) learn to handle rejection with some damn dignity, rather than insulting those that did make it. b) not have submitted to the pool in the first place if you had doubts about the level of work that you thought would be represented. c) not submitted to the pool if you had doubts about your own ability to handle rejection.

My image was not accepted to the pool, and that is fine, I will try again next time and I will try doubly as hard. I also send promos out constantly, sometimes with returned interest, sometimes without. But I don’t go writing letters to Rolling Stone and Vogue about how boring their images are and how I was glad to be rejected so that my work would not be presented alongside inferior images.

I did not personally like many of the images in the final edit, and some i thought were beautiful and absolutely cutting edge.
Some were great and some were not – but that is just my opinion, and this edit is Rob’s opinion.

Stop whining.