Fixed On Prizes
“There are too many awards and prizes for any of them to make sense any longer, yet people still have their eyes fixed on them,” says Jörg M. Colberg. So what makes a successful photo?
It’s not where it appears, or how many awards it earns, Colberg argues. Success is derived from intent – in achieving a goal.
I know it’s easy to fall into the awards abyss, especially the seeking. I used to love it when a random Tumblr photo blog would feature my stuff. It felt like worthwhile recognition, when really it meant nothing. Another photo would replace it in the blog stream, and the handful of people who saw it wouldn’t think much of it. Rinse, repeat.
What did matter to me was earning recognition from a body of work. That took effort, doing research, talking to subjects, planning out the project, thinking about my audience, and pounding the pavement to get the word out. The project was more than a group of photos with a goal – it was the whole workload.
We see “award-winning photographer” enough, don’t we? How about “completed successful project that mattered photographer?”