Four Star My Arse!!

Posted by ciaran on August 18, 2010 in Blog, FIAP | 7 comments

FIAP Acceptance: Cape Circuit – South Africa: “Back Lit”

There are a number of different reasons for entering FIAP salons. First and foremost, I’m a goal oriented person and without a goal I tend to float around pretty aimlessly with my photography with no real direction, leading to me becoming bored, unmotivated and disillusioned. So having the goal of obtaining my AFIAP distinction followed closely by the EFIAP (I hope), really helps to focus my mind. Another reason is to see if my images stand up against the work of other photographers from around the world. It’s always nice to have nice things said about your images close to home, but having an image accepted into a salon or indeed having it place in the medals, particularly in multiple different salons, really means your work is of a high standard. But to be completely honest, one of the main reasons I enter salons, is for the salon catalog.

FIAP Acceptance: Cape Circuit – South Africa: “Stark”

The catalog is a book/magazine that typically displays the winning images in the salon as well as a selection of other images that were accepted into that salon. By entering the salon, regardless of whether or not you were successful in having an image accepted, you are guaranteed to receive a catalog. In general, the quality of photographic books can vary greatly in terms of print quality, binding and content and it’s not surprising that the quality of the salon catalogs can also vary. To give the participants an idea about the quality of the catalog that they can expect, FIAP use a star grading for their salons from un-rated, through to 5 stars. I have always entered four or five star salons for the simple reason that I want four of five star quality catalogs.

So you can imagine my disappointment when I received my catalog for the recent Luxembourg/Mondial salon Four star my arse It’s marginally better than a rag with colour print. It’s magazine format, colour with just 33 pages, of which just 19 contain images and the rest are either adverts or the details on the acceptances. Judging from the one image of mine that was selected for printing, the print quality is poor at best and the colours are off. Not one page is dedicated to any single image so the images that are selected for it, are printed pretty small and it doesn’t really do them justice. I have to admit, I’m pretty disappointed with it and nothing about it would encourage me to enter that salon next year. I’m really hoping that the catalogs for Vigex (Australia), Malta, FotoGrupo (Argentina), China and the Cape Circuit (South Africa) are considerably better

FIAP Acceptance: Cape Circuit – South Africa: “Life Passing Them By”

On the positive side, I received notification from the Cape Circuit in South Africa and I was successful in obtaining 17 acceptances (out of a possible 24). So that’s brought me beyond the 100 acceptances mark to the grand total of 101 Thankfully 3 images were new works, bringing that total to 34, the country total to 10 and the salon total to 14. So I’m getting there….