How to win a WPP award

I was browsing the foto8 site a day ago, and found an interesting page written by Paul Lowe.
On it he discusses what Steve Mayes-who has served as World Press Photo Jury Secretary for the past six years, but who has now retired-considers the golden rules to win a wpp award.

Here they are:

“Rule 1 Is to enter! Don’t try to anticipate the jury and how they will think, just put in your best pictures.
Rule 2 Bad pictures don’t win. The discussions about winning pictures are always between good pictures
Rule 3 Get published- the jury will pull out unrecognised unknown pictures but being a little familiar does sensitise the jury.

But of course, he did note that statistically your best chance of winning is if you are American, male and shoot in black and white.”
So, African, black, shooting in colour….best of luck. Especially if you’ve boosted the saturation.

On the same page is an interesting discussion about the lack of intimate and personal work entered…

“Too many photographers are ‘reflecting the media not as it is but as we wish it was’ and assuming that it is the world that must come to them, not they that must go to the world. Bemoaning the surfeit of stories about the ‘Dispossessed and powerless, the exotic and anywhere but home’ he encouraged photographers to ‘photograph what really, really intrigues you’, commenting that ‘In general what is really missing in photojournalism is work that is really intimate and personal’.”

That is good advice, and we should listen. How personal can you go? I’m going to have a pop…not to win a wpp award in my case, but just for fun. I’m not a fan of all the posturing and scarf wearing that goes on in Amsterdam. I’ll be back in the loft tonight devving up a couple of rolls of that light sensitive stuff known as film, just pics I shot yesterday when I needed some time off. I may even post a shot or two on here…woohoo…hold yourself down.

YOU SAY:

MAX BRAUN wants to get this off his chest:

Great reflecting by a very wise person, Paul Lowe. I am not in the least impressed by the three rules laid out to advice on how to win a WPP award. I am, though, impressed at the realization of what photographers think of the media, and what they wish it to be. I know what I wish it to be. I wish it to be the one that once photographers could really make a living out of reporting, in print, to magazines and newspapers that will pay enough for you to fathom the thought of raising a family with your dream job. All that without having to resort to grants, awards and prizes that will be split between paying your bills and doing the project you proposed to do. I know how lucky I am that today, and I pray tomorrow, can dedicate my grant fully to my work.

It may not be as critical as I describe it, for some. But it is for many. I know too many colleagues of mine who work in bars, or pubs, or have more than one way of income not related to photography to pay for their bills. Its a bloody shame, because I admire the work by many of them. There is, I think, more than one failure in the industry that is forcing many to sacrifice their stories for profit. There are many and the extremes lay at the core of the media as well as at the core of the majority of the population. I have this idyllic thought that the media should serve the population in the way that entertainment and news are laid in equal measure. I have the thought that news are all those things that happen that can/could affect any people’s lives, therefore they care. There is much to report on, then. Unfortunately its cheaper to cover a celebrity, their lovers and their glamorized behavior. I dont know if its the weight, or the difficulty of it or whatever but unless its at my local supermarket, anywhere else I can think of right now I have bend down or kneel down to pick up a good newspaper. Tabloids are usually within easy reach as well as other magazines the world can do without. I guess you could take that as a fact that its easier to access rubbish knowledge than that which can enrich your life, or make you think, consider, understand and maybe act.

I, as a journalist, know that there are stories within our reach, our eyes, that can change lives. I know that people can care and understand more if we report it right. There it will lie the true skill of the journalist, to report in a way people will listen and strive to know more or understand those in the stories. Like I mentioned before here in Duckrabbit, taking photographs is not enough. We ought to make our work to become more than just the document of a reality we care, want to report on and show.