I wasn’t going to put this blog post up until after the deadline for submissions.

Now that the deadline has come and passed, and everybody’s on the same level playing field … I can finally activate this post.

Two years ago, the New York State Fair offered photographers a choice on how to submit entries into their photography competition.  You could mail in a CD with digital images of your photo entries, the Fair judges would pick the ones they want to see at the Fair, and then you foam-board THOSE entries and bring them in on Receiving Day.  The other option was to foam-board ALL of your entries and drop them off on Receiving Day, and then wait for your postcards (accepted or declined) to arrive from the judges.  And then, after all that, comes the late August sunny day when you arrive at the Harriet May Mills Art Center on the New York State Fairgrounds, and you find out whether your artworks are on display, and whether any of them have colored ribbons attached to them.

This year, EVERYBODY must submit their photos on CD for pre-judging.  Once the entries are pre-judged, the judges send an e-mail back to each photographer, letting them know which photo (or photos) have been accepted for the show.  You’re not told that you’ve won or lost; only that the Fair judges have deemed your work worthy to display in the Art Center.

The deadline for submissions was yesterday, July 8.  By the time I went through all the possible photos I could enter for this year’s New York State Fair Photography Competition, I eliminated several pictures that I thought had a chance for the show.  At one point, I had ten pictures I could have entered; I whittled the list down, one by one.  Some of those pictures (including The Jumbuck, Ten Minutes Before They Broke Up and Route 9W Barn) will be shown at other fairs, while other photos, while I thought they were winners, just got surpassed by other photos in my arsenal.

So you want to know which six pictures I submitted for the New York State Fair?

First off, let’s review the pictures that have won ribbons in Syracuse.  Of the six pictures over the past four years that have “made the wall,” five have picked up silks.  They include:

 

Okay, now it’s time to reveal which six I submitted for this year.

Here’s my six.  They include:

THE FINAL SERMON

Of course you know I had to submit at least one picture from the St. Patrick’s Church collection.  I bounced around several different titles for this picture; someone suggested that because the bell tower now looks like a bottle of vodka, that I title the picture “Absolut Watervliet.”  Yeah… not feeling that.  I decided to go instead with “The Final Sermon” for this picture.

LOW TIDE AT SUNRISE

Ah, you know I have to submit at least one Canadian-photographed image every time I participate in this competition.  Shot in the early morning along Saints’ Rest Beach in Saint John, N.B., this mixture of long-exposure and short-flash brings out the brilliant reddish rocks at the Bay of Fundy’s lowest tide.

PIES ON THE WINDOWSILL

A simple little picture.  If you look at it, you can find that there are pies on the windowsill.   One of two pictures I’m entering this year that were shot with efke film, that high-contrast black-and-white Croatian product that, like Kodachrome, is no longer being manufactured.

HELLO!

I know that I’m zero-for-three in my llama pictures ever receiving ribbons… but I’ve never entered a llama picture at the New York State Fair.  Maybe Mr. Tumnus can bring me some magic?  And just so that you all know, I chose this picture for submission at the last minute, replacing Ten Minutes Before They Broke Up with Mr. Tumnus’ gaze.

THE LENTEN MEAL

One of my most successful splitfilm pictures, The Agfa Bridge Over Ansco Lake, snagged a second-place ribbon at the Fair two years ago.  So let’s see what happens when I enter this little splitfilm treasure.

THE THREE-TWO PITCH

And finally, here’s my first-ever slitscan entry into the competition.  Are we looking for a complete game shutout… or is this guy going to give up a grand slam?

So let me break this down in bits and pieces. I submitted six entries to the Fair.

• Four were shot with film; two with digital (Hello! and Low Tide at Sunrise).
• Three were color shots; two are black and white; one is BOTH (The Lenten Meal).
• Five of the photos were shot with Nikon gear; one with Agfa equipment (The Lenten Meal).
• Of the four film shots, two used Kodak film (The Lenten Meal, The Three-Two Pitch); two used efke film (The Last Sermon, Pies on the Windowsill).
• Two of my pictures (The Lenten Meal, The Three-Two Pitch) have exposed sprocket holes in the image.  I’ve had success with that at the NYS Fair in the past.
• Five of the photos were taken in the Capital District; one was taken in New Brunswick (Low Tide at Sunrise).
• I’ve never won a ribbon with a llama photo (0-for-3).  However, I’ve never entered a llama photo in the NYS Fair competition.  Hello! will be my first llama picture at the NYS Fair.
• I’m 2-for-2 with splitfilm images (The Agfa Bridge Over Ansco Lake, Coca-Cola Relieves Fatigue), so why not see if I can go 3-for-3? (The Lenten Meal)
• Four of my five ribbons from the NYS Fair have come from Capital District photographs; the fifth ribbon was garnered by a photo of a basketball game in Rochester.  I’m 0-for-2 in Canadian winners; maybe Low Tide at Sunrise can break that streak.
• I’ve never won at the New York State Fair with efke film.  I’m hoping that either Pies on the Windowsill or The Final Sermon will be the first in that category.

So, as I’ve done in the past, I turn this over to you.  There’s a poll at the bottom of this blog post.  If you were a judge, which one these pictures do you think has the best chance of winning money and ribbons and accolades this summer at the New York State Fair?  You get to choose as many as three pictures, and please let me know in the comments section below why you picked what you picked.

And let’s hope that the judges in Syracuse also appreciate these pictures.

[poll id=”15″]