2015 Leica Oskar Barnack Award...

hepcat

hepcat

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Well, that time of year has rolled 'round again. Leica is accepting portfolios once again for the 2015 Oskar Barnack Award.

Despite that I've not yet submitted anything close to what the jurors like, I've decided once again to submit a portfolio... I uploaded the images to a Flickr album. The theme of my portfolio this year is how agriculture has irreversibly transformed the native landscape into something completely different. I have no illusion that I'll even make it into the top 50, but it is fun and entertaining to enter.

I hope you enjoy it.

Oskar Barnack Award Submission 2015
 
Not to gut shoot anyone's dreams, but be prepared for a very steep uphill battle in your pursuit of the Oskar Barnak award. Many want it; a rare breed receive it.

I asked about the Oskar on another forum and here were the replies I got -

Realistically, the Oskar Barnack prize is not going to be won by anyone without some kind of agency representation and a strong body of consistent work that has been independently critically acclaimed. The photographer's work will also likely have been exhibited in serious venues and/or have been (non-vanity) published.
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And -

It was historically presented by World Press Photo, who named the award, and only more recently by Leica. It is far more than a sort of 'one challenge on steroids'. When Subotzky won it in 2009, he was already a nominee member of Magnum. The body of work which he won it for (published as a very nice book called Beaufort West) was shot with a medium format film camera and what looks to me to be Portra (NC).
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In spite of all the above, anything is possible if a guy (or gal) wants it bad enough and works hard enough.

Watch the following video; imagine the football is your camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-raYgOmYPvQ

That is the kind of commitment it's going to take.
 
I said it last year & will echo my statements again this year & probably will next year as well: This award should be given ONLY to someone who photographed a body of work using a Barnack camera. End of rant.
 
noisycheese said:
Not to gut shoot anyone's dreams, but be prepared for a very steep uphill battle in your pursuit of the Oskar Barnak award. Many want it; a rare breed receive it.

I asked about the Oskar on another forum and here were the replies I got -

And -

In spite of all the above, anything is possible if a guy (or gal) wants it bad enough and works hard enough.

Watch the following video; imagine the football is your camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-raYgOmYPvQ

That is the kind of commitment it's going to take.
Click to expand...

Ahhh, yes, a little like banks not giving loans to people who need money, only to those that already have the money. Excellent system, keeps it nice and tidy and cliquey. 🙄
 
noisycheese said:
Not to gut shoot anyone's dreams, but be prepared for a very steep uphill battle in your pursuit of the Oskar Barnak award. Many want it; a rare breed receive it.

I asked about the Oskar on another forum and here were the replies I got -

And -

In spite of all the above, anything is possible if a guy (or gal) wants it bad enough and works hard enough.

Watch the following video; imagine the football is your camera: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-raYgOmYPvQ

That is the kind of commitment it's going to take.
Click to expand...

One really doesn't enter this sort of thing expecting to win... it's foolish if you do. It's the challenge of assembling a coherent portfolio as a year-long project that is the fun part.
 
hepcat said:
One really doesn't enter this sort of thing expecting to win... it's foolish if you do. It's the challenge of assembling a coherent portfolio as a year-long project that is the fun part.
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Agreed. Another good way to prompt oneself to get out and shoot, edit, re-think, re-shoot, re-edit, scrap, start again, shoot more... and so on. 🙂

FWIW I rather like the photos you have with the prominent human elements - the silos, and the cultivator (or whatever that green agricultural vehicle is - please forgive my ignorance).
 
Godfrey said:
Exactly.
I like your submission, Roger! Nice photos every one.

Maybe I'll spend a day pulling together a submission... 🙂

G
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Thanks, Godfrey! You go for it. 😉 It'd be nice to be able to say I know someone who won the Barnack Award!

rwintle said:
Agreed. Another good way to prompt oneself to get out and shoot, edit, re-think, re-shoot, re-edit, scrap, start again, shoot more... and so on. 🙂

FWIW I rather like the photos you have with the prominent human elements - the silos, and the cultivator (or whatever that green agricultural vehicle is - please forgive my ignorance).
Click to expand...

Thanks very much. That's a "combine," btw... it harvests corn, wheat, or soybeans with different attachments on the front.
 
hepcat said:
One really doesn't enter this sort of thing expecting to win... it's foolish if you do. It's the challenge of assembling a coherent portfolio as a year-long project that is the fun part.
Click to expand...
You make two very valid points.

Entering a competition of this level and expecting to win is setting yourself up for heartache. That reminds me of some of the people in my photography club. They get a print or two accepted into a juried gallery exhibit. They are excited. The Exhibit opens, then closes. Their prints do not sell. They are depressed because they supposedly "failed."

Once I got past the nonsense of judging my photographic undertakings based on sale of prints and the generation of revenue, I started to enjoy photography and exhibiting a lot more. My work also began to evolve and improve much more than before.

Photography is not about money. It is about the process, the journey, the photographic life, the challenge of honing your vision, your technique and improving in the long haul.

Sold prints = success, no print sales = failure is a load of crap IMHO. The same can be said for "winning" or "losing" a high level competition such as the Oskar Barnack.
 
noisycheese said:
You make two very valid points.

Entering a competition of this level and expecting to win is setting yourself up for heartache. That reminds me of some of the people in my photography club. They get a print or two accepted into a juried gallery exhibit. They are excited. The Exhibit opens, then closes. Their prints do not sell. They are depressed because they supposedly "failed."

Once I got past the nonsense of judging my photographic undertakings based on sale of prints and the generation of revenue, I started to enjoy photography and exhibiting a lot more. My work also began to evolve and improve much more than before.

Photography is not about money. It is about the process, the journey, the photographic life, the challenge of honing your vision, your technique and improving in the long haul.

Sold prints = success, no print sales = failure is a load of crap IMHO. The same can be said for "winning" or "losing" a high level competition such as the Oskar Barnack.
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Great post...
 
I have decided to start with more modest aspirations by entering the inaugural Oskar Barnackle awards. Here is my submission. Oskar is the one smiling to the camera.

16311794387_a3d8e90931_z.jpg
 
noisycheese said:
Not to gut shoot anyone's dreams, but be prepared for a very steep uphill battle in your pursuit of the Oskar Barnak award. Many want it; a rare breed receive it.

I asked about the Oskar on another forum and here were the replies I got -
Click to expand...

I wrote the first of your quoted statements and I stand by it. Of course, there is nothing to stop anyone entering the competition and, if doing so is a valuable exercise in itself, than by all means it is worth doing. However, anyone entering it has to be realistic about what the aims of the competition are and the type of working editorial photographer that the competition is aiming to support and provide a platform for. It is not about perpetuating a clique or analogous to banks loaning money, it is simply a competition that recognises a certain type of photographer that it wants to support. The award's goal is quite clear:
An international jury awards the Leica Oskar Barnack Award to professional photographers whose unerring powers of observation capture and express the relationship between man and the environment in the most graphic form ... which the photographer perceives and documents the interaction between man and the environment with acute vision and contemporary visual style – creative, groundbreaking and unintrusive.
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Entrants without a very strong, consistent body of work (that will also have already received a certain amount of recognition) will not get anywhere near the shortlist, let alone win the award.
 
"Realistically, the Oskar Barnack prize is not going to be won by anyone without some kind of agency representation and a strong body of consistent work that has been independently critically acclaimed. The photographer's work will also likely have been exhibited in serious venues and/or have been (non-vanity) published."

Chances are if someone has an impressive, mature body of work and is aggressively ambitious then they will naturally be likely to have already garnered recognition - let's not assume that the horse follows the cart.
 
ian_watts said:
Entrants without a very strong, consistent body of work (that will also have already received a certain amount of recognition) will not get anywhere near the shortlist, let alone win the award.
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Ian, there are over 2500 portfolios submitted each year. I really wish there was somewhere online we could go to see the entirety of what is submitted. I think that'd be fascinating, and really interesting. I find it interesting that a new jury is selected each year, and so I'd expect each jury would select a different kind of entry which would prevent a photographer from "shooting for the jury." Unfortunately, the winning entries from the past several years, while all of different subject matter, still all seem to be kind of sullen, dark, and have a sense of forboding; yet different. It's like they had the same jury over and over.

Nothing I shoot is anything like those entries, and frankly I don't really have much appreciation for most of the winning entries, so I know that I don't stand a snowball's chance in h*ll of winning anything.

Still, as I said above, it's the exercise that I enjoy...
 
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