The Online Photographer

Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

By Eadweard Muybridge

[Entries are now closed. Thanks everyone!]

We've had many "Baker's Dozens" over the years. The idea is that I suggest a theme, you send in work, and I curate a small "juried show" from the offerings—a dozen pictures, with one extra for good measure.

This one is for still pictures, as always. Ignore the fact that the horsie above is moving.  :-)

These are always fun. We've had all kinds of themes and ideas in the past, from "Yellow" to "Grandkids" to "Leica Lenses" to "Blur." I racked my brain and searched the site, but I don't think we've ever done one called "Film." We did do "Sheet Film" once, but that was specific to large format work.

So this time, it's just...Film. The (still!) picture has to be your own work or a picture you are sure you own or control the rights to. New or old, it has to utilize film in one way or another, or reflect the theme in some detectable/explicable way. Special effects, interesting mistakes, unusual or ancient departed materials, all fine. Partly digital or digitized is fine; you can be creative. Or, not—a phone snap of an old print is OK too. It can be the straightest of the straight or the weirdest of the weird. It can be something that reflects your current work or something you dug out of the bottom of the archive. It's up to you. Technical details are usually something other readers like to see, but aren't required. If it isn't blatantly obvious, be sure to tell me how the "film" theme figures in.

Specs: Please send me, by email, one (1) JPEG, 800 pixels wide (n.b.: wide), saved as sRGB.

Please include:

—Your name and address including country
—Short description of the submission including title or caption if applicable
—Anything else you want to say

Incredibly important: the subject line MUST say:

BDfilm

Exactly just exactly like that, exactly. No space, lowercase f. The reason is that after a hundred or so submissions, I'll search ye olde Inbox for "BDfilm," and if you got the subject line wrong your picture won't come up and I won't see it. Be careful of this requirement, it's mandatory. (And, thank you.)

My address is: [Entries are now closed. Thanks everyone!]

I think that's everything. There might be a prize—I'll announce that in a few days.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Gary Merken: "What is the submission deadline? How many entries can we submit?"

Mike replies: No deadline. Past experience shows that sometimes it needs a longer "soak" so to speak, and sometimes the 13 spaces fill up pretty quickly. I guess you might say the deadline is whenever I post the set. 

But if you'd like a deadline, call it the end of next weekend. I certainly won't close it before then.

And, one entry per person. Again, past experience...when I ask for three, for instance, I notice that those who submit three usually do so because all three pictures are a bit on the weaker side. I'd rather have people pick the one they think is best.

Bottom line, this isn't important. It's just for fun. So, you decide which one you think is best.

This might be a good place to remind everyone that a contest isn't a judgment. Lots of times, I'll have many more excellent pictures than I can use, so I might have picked one that I didn't. Sometimes it's dictated by the flow of the set. Sometimes it's a matter of what other people submit. For instance, I just received a very nice shot of a giant tree, backlit with sunlight. Now, if another person submitted a nice picture of a backlit tree, I'd only pick one of them. That doesn't mean the one I didn't pick isn't good; it's just that I don't need two. Or, it might even be something that can't be seen in the picture—maybe I don't want all 13 to be by women, or maybe I don't need four selections by readers from Morocco. Simple examples, but you get the point, which is: there's no reason at all to take it personally if yours doesn't get chosen.

And by the way, I don't have problems with that. TOP readers by and large are remarkably mature. No one complains. Fortunately, usually the sets are so strong that people who don't get picked can at least see why I went with the ones I did. The category is sort of amorphous this time, and doesn't give people a lot of guidance, so I'll be curious to see how that affects the submissions. I've gotten some good ones so far!