Twin Cities Professional Photographers Annual Print Competition

Like the Power Ball, you can't win if you don't enter. Actually, more important than winning the competition is just obtaining professional level feedback. It isn't easy finding someone who is willing to truly give their opinion and the opinion is coming from a source worth listening to. You might get it if you in a school program, but even then many teachers are very guarded in their critique. You can't afford to lose a student. Programs survive and are measured by a graduation rate. If a critique inadvertently discourages students, then you are potentially doing serious harm to your program.

So, I'm entering the following prints just for the chance to be told how they may be improved - what are the qualities that are not necessarily good? The Internet community is mostly caulk full of empty praise, encouraging maybe, but not useful. I don't know, maybe I'm just strange. I respect and would be more interested in professional or personal associations which regularly offer criticism. For me, that is a real sign that they are interested enough in you (or your work) to hope for improvement.

So... please do forward suggestions for improvement. They'll be greatly appreciated. The only thing to realize is that these prints (16x20) will have a lot of painterly-like detail in them that isn't visible in these small files.

The first image is called Faux Fly and are a collection of butterfly wings I found over 30 years ago walking along country roads in Kentucky. The butterflies where so numerous in that area that these were the ones I found along the sides of roads (killed by cars). I knew I would do something with them someday. They have been in a Skippy jar with moth balls all those years.

The second is called Angel of Death and is described in a prior post.

The third image is called Water Lily and the last is Aeon which is part of my Circular Obsessions sculpture series.