Good News ( A little self promotion)

Things have been quite busy lately.  Outside of work, I've been working on a number of things.  I've been camera testing an antique Kodak camera that's been modified to accept 120 film.  I've had some light leak issues and once I get those taken care of, I'll post a video review as well as some sample images.  I shot a pinhole camera for the first time (which I plan to do more of in the future) and I ran a test roll through a Mamiyaflex C2 that I plan on purchasing.  Outside of that, I've been working on a project that's been in the conception stage for over a year.  I started creating images for this project in January and I'm happy with the progression, although it's still a long way from being completed.  Maybe when I feel compelled to show some of this work, I'll post something here.  In addition to that, I have some good news to report.  I don't typically use the blog to convey this type of information, but I've had a number of positive things happen this week, so I thought I would share.

I typically enter a number of regional competitions over the course of a year.  I've decided to branch out and enter a few national and international competitions in 2012.  Curious Camera  is an organization that was started in Arizona in 2009.  They embrace the photography created by "curious" cameras including, but not limited to plastic/toy cameras like the Holga, pinhole cameras, antique cameras, instant cameras and phone cameras.  They've been hosting an annual competition of images created with these cameras and I decided to enter a few of my instant images.  They select a first, second and third place winner and then 30 honorable mentions out of hundreds of entries from around the world that will then hang in an exhibit at the ArtsEye Gallery in Tucson, AZ.  The image below won an honorable mention.  It's posted in the Curious Camera online winner's gallery here and you can see it in person from April 28-July 31 in Arizona.

As you know, I've become an avid instant photographer and I love the Impossible Project.  Last year they launched a special film in conjunction with the Ace Hotel.  In addition to that film, Ace Hotel created an online gallery where photographers could upload their Impossible photos.  In the fall of this year, a number of curators will select images in this massive online gallery to hang in a physical exhibit in NYC.  In the meantime, they've been selecting monthly winners.  I found out this week that the image below was selected as one of April's winners.  You can see the post on Ace Hotel's blog here as well as Impossible Project's blog.  Keep your fingers crossed that I get into the physical exhibit.

There is a magazine dedicated exclusively to film photography called Films and Grains.  They have themes in every issue that photographers can submit their work to.  They also have an open theme section dedicated to instant photography.  I decided to submit a few images to the instant gallery and one of them was chosen to be published!  The piece is entitled "Gallery" and was taken on a Polaroid 440 Automatic Land Camera with Fuji FP-100C film.  The piece will be in Issue 5 of Films and Grains slated to be released on May 4.  You can purchase it here on May 4.

That's it for now.  I'll hopefully be back soon with more work to show, cameras reviewed and the next installation of the Artist Spotlight Feature.  Keep shooting and I'll see you soon!