The first year it was 50 reviewers for 50 bucks, those reviewers each looked at all 600 entries, and we only had a little grumbling about the number of portfolios we were asking them to look at. The second year we went up to 200 reviewers, who each looked at 450 entries, but we had a lot of complaints of reviewer fatigue. We instituted the book publishing for this second year, in order to (a) make 2 or 3 photographers ecstatically happy, (b) to have something cool to send to the other 600 photographers, (c) to have something to bribe the reviewers with to keep them happy and willing to keep reviewing and to give them a feeling of satisfaction that their Critical Mass participating made these books happen. For the third year, to keep our reviewers from jumping ship, we added the prescreening and drastically dropped the number of portfolios – to 150. This year we redesigned and streamlined the voting process and crept the number of portfolios back up a tiny bit – to 175. The good news and the bad news is that there were more than 150 and 175 solid portfolios submitted.

off to find some happy kids …

Or how’s this for a concept to document a social group – I contact people who just found out they didn’t get selected for Photo Lucida & take colour 4×5 shots of them looking glumly at their computer screens?

no for real. more people should start contests, for beer.

oh, ok, I hadn’t read the post.

Huh?

Rob is a big name and he is on the final list of 200+ reviewers as well! He also is doing the “Reviewer’s Scrapbook”.

Honestly, I don’t understand all the talk about Critical Mass being too expensive. It costs more than $275 to go to New York for a week to see a half dozen editors. With Critical Mass some 217 editors, gallerists and publishers see your work. This is one way to jump start your career, by getting your work out and getting people talking about it. Seems like a bargain to me.

RDP

What does “fair” really have to do with it, anyway, since no one is compelled to enter the contest, having read the terms of entry?

Even if the entry fee was four million dollars, no one would have cause to wonder about “fairness”, since entry is voluntary.

Is there something else here I’ve missed?

BUT (maybe):
What makes contests like Critical Mass (and The Spider Awards as well) special is the judging panel.

As Rob has stated it above: it shouldn’t be seen as a competition primay. It’s more a way to get your images/folio in front of some
interesting people. If it works out at the end for the individual photographer ? I don’t know. But at least it’s a chance, or an alternative to the usual promotions.

As you can see in Rob’s intro-post. He was impressed by some new and fresh ’smiling’ work (and by kids pics *smile). If he would be still an editor he maybe would have hired one of those young guns. And with a $200 editorial job (we are heading into a new depression and soon all photogs will drive along the route 66 looking for ‘Photographer Wanted’ signs *smile) the balance would be decreased to – $75 :-)

However
To follow all the numerous contests out there one would need an assistant and some 1000’s bucks a year for prints, entry fees, shipping …

Titles, merits, nominations, acceptations, etc. usually do mean nothing (moneywise). They will not buy you any food. A close friend is a a PSA-5-Star photographer (his wife has a 2 or 3 PSA rating and she was one of those ‘Black & white photographers of the year’ anno …). To get this rating one must contribute to numerous contests for decades ! Their cellar is full of these catalogues. Never ever somebody offered him a job or bought a print from him. The only way he did some money: when he winned a cam or a lens that he could sell thereafter :-)

However, your milage may vary …

The other way to finance a high class contests is to find a patron like Sheik Al Thani of Quatar. Although they have entry fees there as well. But at least their catalogue is a coffee table book of highest quality (worth the entry fees) – and $ 80.000.- cash for the winners, the usual Leica cam *smile and an invitation to Doha (no, you don’t have to pay for you seat there …)

@JMG … If of interest, the similar spider awards run a seperated black&white and color competition. But high entry fees as well and I’m not sure about the reward of this contest.

Best, reini

Thanks for responding with a direct and easy to understand statement about this issue. Its nice to see a comprehensive explanation all in one spot. Might I suggest you make it part of your call for entries next year or at least more up front on your site. I think it may help avoid any worries people may have and help them make a good decision about participating or not.

what about your list of people that you liked but did not make the top 180? where can we find those? or even a list of the original ideas you thought needed more gestation?

I am director of photolucida, and I can shed some light on how the entry fees for Critical Mass are used!

Foremost, we publish 3 books a year (last year 2) and send a copy of each out to all who entered and all who juried. So, for instance, we are preparing to send out our three CM06 books, and these books will go out to over 700 people, domestically and internationally. So we will mailing out over 2100 books. The production of the books and the postage to send them to this many people is our main expense. We also give a generous amount of books to the award winners. We also send Critical Mass books to 30 Oregon art schools, colleges & libraries so the public can enjoy them.

Other expenses are: the development of our software to run Critical Mass – we just re-designed it to make it more quick and efficient, both for people entering and the jurors. We have a programmer that we pay real money to – the amount of time/skill it takes to work with this amount of information is enormous – there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work happening with the programming that people are not aware of.

Other expenses: we produce a CD of the work of all who enter, duplicate it, and send it to all photographers. We produce a CD of the finalist’s work and send it to all 200 jurors along with a booklet of thumbnail images and contact info for the finalists for the jurors to use as a reference tool – tangible material they can refer to down the road or pass around to colleagues. We send these packets to all 200+ jurors, in the US and overseas. We also send this CD to many photography teachers who use it in their curriculum.

We give “awards” to photographers from other countries who would probably not be able to afford to pay the submission fee. Last year it was to 9 photographers from Poland, this year it is for 5 photographers from Mexico. We are glad to be able to do this and it adds a different perspective to the mix of work for the jurors.

Critical Mass is pretty far removed from a money-grabbing scheme/pyramid scheme (words I have seen in blog-land)- I encourage people to look at our website for details about what we do (please read the CM success stories as well) and look at the list of great people in the photography world who align themselves with our Reviews and Critical Mass – if we were shady in any way, would these people be helping us?

To spend $75 to have a pre-screening board look at your work, receive a CD of the work of hundreds of one’s contemporaries, and to eventually receive the books of the book award winners is not a bad deal. To spend $200 (if one is a finalist) to get your work to 200+ people in the photography world is a marketing dollar pretty well spent. If you can do this on your own for less, that is great!

photolucida is a very small non-profit, with probably the lowest overhead ever. I am the only paid staff member (part-time at that) and so much of the work here is done by board members who donate their time and skills. In short, our board is comprised primarily of photographers who have decided to try to do nice things for other photographers.

Hope this information is helpful!

Laura Moya
Director

“From these votes, two or three photographers receive book awards and once the monographs are published, everyone who enters and reviews will receive copies of the books.

We are pleased to continue to give scholarships to pre-selected photographers by geographical region. In 2007, we gave scholarships to Polish photographers, this year the focus will be on photographers from Mexico.”

Where does that money go? How is it used? Does it seem fair?

Thanks,

Curious