This is a series of posts first published on my personal blog that will discuss information about Salons & Exhibitions that I hope you will find useful, and encourage people to participate in Photo Salons. I very much hope that you find this, and other posts of interest, use and encouraging. Please do like and share this article using the links at the bottom
The posts in this series are:
Background
Following encouragement from Mike Watson, I entered a few Salons and Exhibitions over the last year. I only entered about 5 or 6 last year, but I've had several acceptances and even won a commendation ribbon in MidPhot and a Gold Medal in the Cheltenham Salon. It is something that we actively promote as a club, but there are at the moment only a few members I'm aware of that enter external salons and exhibitions (like June, Martin, Deb and Mike for example) I wonder though, if more people knew a bit more about these excellent opportunities to display their photos, they might consider and enjoy participating as well.
To that end, I thought I'd put together this series of articles to share my (albeit limited) experiences in the hope that it inspires other members to give it a shot.
I've written this in a very informal and personal tone in order to make it feel inclusive to all club member rather than just to the advanced workers. There are most certainly some members in the beginners class, whose photos that would do well in Salons. Therefore please don't think this is just something that the advanced members can aspire to.
Last year, Mike said to me, have a go and you'll most likely be surprised, and indeed I was… which is why I'm repeating that advice to everyone.
I guess initially, there are a few questions to be answered... So… First of all...
What is a salon?
Well, in short, it is a combination of a photographic exhibition and a competition. There are many, many salons and exhibitions worldwide and entering them can bring awards and distinctions. While there are many commercial competitions with tangible prizes that you may feel you might like to compete in to win things, these are often initiated by companies, to make a profit from and collect images for commercial gain. Salons however, are usually patronised by photographic bodies, and tend to be more for prestige and recognition rather than for prize gains.
These national and international photographic bodies include:
FIAP - Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique - https://www.fiap.net/en
PSA - Photographic Society of America - https://psa-photo.org/
GPU - Global Photographic Union - https://www.gpuphoto.com/
PAGB - Photographic Alliance of Great Britain - http://www.thepagb.org.uk/
BPE - British Photographic Exhibitions - http://www.britishphotographicexhibitions.org.uk/
While there are some salons and exhibitions, including MidPhot, that usually have print sections, with the Covid19 pandemic, most of these were cancelled so I only did Digital Images. There are also usually different sections that you can enter images in to. There are normally Open Colour and Open Monochrome Sections of course, but then there can be other sections with specific general themes and rules. These might include:
Nature - Which has strict rules on nature images like limited editing,
Travel - Obviously travel photos, showing the people and culture in the environment.
Creative - Which is for composites and digital artwork like we see from our particularly creative members like Annie Blick, Brian Swinyard, Deb Godwin, Mike Watson and John Bridgen, as well as the super work Suzanne Mellor shares in the Club Facebook group
Scapes - This can include seascapes, landscapes and cityscapes amongst other things.
This year, MidPhot has also included a Triptych section. A Triptych is THREE images that are related or tell a story or progression and placed on a background.
Why bother...
Well other than the feeling of accomplishment of having images accepted in to national and international exhibitions, and winning awards, medals and ribbons, you may have noticed people in the community (like Lee Sutton and Kylie-Ann Martin) with accreditations like EFIAP and BPE2. These accreditations, or distinctions as they are called, are gained by achieving acceptances in accredited Salons and Exhibitions. I'll talk more about these in a later post.
As mentioned earlier, each salon usually has many sections and each section can have multiple awards, Gold, Silver, Bronze as well as ribbons for commended and highly commended images. There are also often judges awards.
In addition many salons are patronised by more than one photographic body and so can bestow many awards.
For example, the Cheltenham International Salon of Photography (CISP) is affiliated with FIAP, PSA, GPU and the PAGB
Each salon can award a Gold Medal per section for each of these bodies, as well as various Salon Silver and Bronze medals in each section plus several ribbons for each body and section.
This generates for example over 140 awards in the Cheltenham Salon.
Although there are many entries to these salons etc, (last year in the Cheltenham Salon for example, there were almost 8000 photographic entries from over 650 entrants in more than 50 countries worldwide,) About 81% of entrants gained at least one acceptance, and 23% of all entries were accepted so don't be to concerned about the number of entries. You certainly have an equal chance and it's a real sense of achievement having your work recognised as being to such a high quality to appear in an international exhibition.
If you have found this post interesting and useful, please do comment below or like & share it.
The other posts in this series are: