My Self-Portrait Won One of the B&W Spider Awards:
Ape by
Slobodan Blagojevic, on Flickr
1. Actually, 3rd place in the
Wildlife/Amateur category, and will be published in the PHOTO PAPER Magazine (print edition). You can download issues #1 and #2 with previous year's winning images
here. I might be biased of course, but I was very impressed with the quality published in the magazines so far.
The Black and White Spider Awards, now in its 7th year, claims to be
"... the leading international award honoring black and white photography... With a collective Judging Panel of the world’s most recognized experts from TATE, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, FRATELLI ALINARI, THE ART NEWSPAPER, BONHAMS of London and more..." Of course, the best way to deal with self-proclamations like this is to visit
the site and see for yourself.
2. Speaking about competitions, I was also recently "commended" in the 2012 Sony World Photography Awards, in the Travel category. That's the same competition where Mitch Dobrowner won Photographer of the Year title (luckily for him, he was in the Professional Category, and I was in the Open one, so Mitch was safe
)
This was the photo:
Rainy Parisian Summer by
Slobodan Blagojevic, on Flickr
Unfortunately, this Sony competition announcement did not pass without a little cruelty: I first got an email congratulating me on being shortlisted among the top 10 in the travel category, only to be followed with an "ooops, sorry, we screwed up" mail a day later, congratulating me on being "commended" instead.
3. Speaking about cruelty, life has a habit of repeating it on occasion. Two years ago, I got an email congratulating me on being shortlisted, again in the top 10, for the cover of the Rangefinder magazine. One of the 10 would end up on the cover, but the rest would still be published inside. Again, a day or two later, I got an email retracting the previous one. This time it was not on technical or clerical grounds, but on the grounds of one of the most unbelievable political correctness and affirmative action examples i personally experienced: there was not a single women photographer among the top ten! Never mind that the jurying was blind (i.e., no name or gender was known to the judges). Never mind that some female contestants protested they feel insulted and patronized that they are not going to win on the strength of their photography, but on their gender. They decided, post-factum, to go for a little affirmative action, reshuffled the cards and came back with something like 5/5 or 6/4 ratio. Needless to say, I was among the four or five booted out. This was the photo in question, btw:
The L Train by
Slobodan Blagojevic, on Flickr
Sorry for the long post (and some rant along the way).
