Figure I'd share this here, since I have posted many of my Chicago shots. One of my submissions made the cover of this 160-page book, which is conducted by CBS Chicago. There were some 27,800 submissions total, from around 2500 submitters. Sounds like this book is pretty nice, not even talking about the cover.
Chicago people: they supposedly showed the photo on CBS news at 5, 6 and are also showing at 10PM (Central Time USA), tune in if you have a chance!
Thanks. Eh, not really concerned about giving anything up with that image, the way I see it, it would have just continued to sit in it's current existence, which was unnoticed. This contest has given it life! And, hopefully help open doors for future progress.
Tomagado wrote:
Congrats on the win. Also, congrats on getting boned on the $. Hope you didn't turn over all the rights by winning, it's a stellar image.
Oh well.
Cheers,
Thomas
not sure what you meant by getting boned on the $ but since you brought it up, I just found out that I do get a $200 gift card to Amazon. Which, I'll gladly take!
TBannor wrote:
Congrats. It's a fine image. Have you tried marketing it with a stock agency? You'll make more than $200 for a cover.
no I haven't. I'll take a look - do you recommend any agencies in particular?
Congratulations on a well deserved win! Of those submissions, a dozen are mine. I haven't heard anything beyond what you've shown here, but also don't really watch the news.
As for the $$ side of this, you have to admit it is an ingenious marketing idea that they've got going. They get to put together what's arguably the best compilation of Chicago photography, sell it in a coffee table book, pay almost nothing for the work, and get all the proceeds of the book sales. Despite the fact that I entered this willingly, mostly with the hopes of being published, I do almost regret doing it. Not because of the lack of prizes, but rather the way they've handled announcing the winners.
In addition, many of what I thought were the best photos submitted really had no noticeable connection to Chicago itself. There were lots of great barn shots and nature scenes from suburbs that are so distant you couldn't drive there from the city in an hour.
It seems like they're trying to sell as many of the books as possible before saying whose artwork (photography) will actually be in it. It's a little bit of a sleazy way to do it, since we're all waiting weeks to hear the results.
I'm glad to see someone who I believe has real talent did get the cover, as opposed to a tourist in for the weekend who got a lucky shot with an I phone! Nice going, and looking forward to seeing the rest of the book!
Yeah, I did see that, but only after going through the Facebook links. The main link that I've been watching says they're still "tight lipped" or something about the winners.
Thanks for the links! I'll keep watching for now. And I am honestly happy to see you got the cover. I don't like every shot you've ever posted here, but I LOVE many of them!
The reason it's ingenious is they know folks are all too willing to give work away. As for stock agencies, start here.
I'm not saying you'll make a ton of money, but you'll make more than you will giving your very excellent images away. It is a lot of work and you need to learn how to keyword.
Here is a cover image of mine licensed through alamy.com. Brought in quite a bit more than $200.
oh and they had separate "mini" contests within the larger one for specifics such as the seasons, and one of them was photos from the suburbs.. that would explain those photos.
