How To Shoot an Art Show for www.juxtapoz.com

First! please check with the Juxtapoz web editor to see if we're interested and have availability in our publishing schedule to cover the event in question.

An example pitch:
"Hi, Do you want to cover My Art Show at Some Cool Gallery in Some City, Somewhere? The opening night is on a DATE and runs through ANOTHER DATE. Thanks!" -An Awesome Artist, Gallery or Photographer

If we say, "Yes! We'd love to cover Your Art Show", you need to decide if you will be publishing the photos independently or if you want Juxtapoz to post your photos on www.juxtapoz.com. Event photos for www.juxtapoz.com should not be published elsewhere; not on Flickr, MySpace, other blogs, the gallery's site, or the artist's site. ("Fair Use" allows for 1-2 images to be used as excerpts elsewhere but must be attributed to Juxtapoz and the photographer.)

Photos that are published elsewhere can be linked to from www.juxtapoz.com. We take a sample image and write a short post with a link to the photos. This may be preferable if you want to publish images outside of our specifications. (i.e. more or larger images, a Flash slideshow, etc.)

If you want your photos posted on www.juxtapoz.com, please read the following content guidelines and photo specifications.

CONTENT GUIDELINES:
"Guidelines" in this case are actually suggestions. You are free to take whatever photos you like. However, we see a lot of photos from a lot of different events, and we have some ideas about what kind of photos work best for us.

What makes each art event unique is the art, the venue, and the people.

Photos of the art should be close, clear and head-on (the arty sideways shot is best for 3D works.) We prefer to see close up with details rather than far away with a lot of wall space. Wall space is not interesting, unless it's an installation.

Overall shots of the gallery are fine, but we only need a few. We get many shots of the layout of the gallery wall. The art isn't as clear, and most gallery walls tend to look the same. If the layout is part of an installation, we'd love a photo.

Overall shots of the crowd are fine too but should also be limited. We get many photos from art events that are, basically, peoples' backsides from ten feet away. Photos of people in a gallery all start to look the same unless the subject(s) engage with the camera/viewer. We like to see a proportion of about 60/40 (art/people) in the content of the images. People are neat, but art events get a lot of repeat visitors. Always try to get photos of the participating artists and gallery folks, but what's new and interesting at each event is the art.

Examples of awesome art event coverage:

The Street Art Show photos by C-Monster
The Thunderdog Collective photos by Vidalia
Your Face Looks Like An Island photos by Mildred
EXIT: new works by SheOne photos by Chris Osburn

PHOTO SPECIFICATIONS for www.juxtapoz.com:

• We like about 20-40 photos with captions and a brief event summary.
• All images must be 480px wide, height may vary.
• All images must be jpegs/RGB (no gifs / Index colors / CMYK)
• Photos should be color correct. Galleries don't always have the best lighting for photography. Many photos shot in dim lighting can be redeemed by adjusting the Levels or Curves with Photoshop.
• All images must be optimized for web viewing i.e. under 100k each. Use the Save for Web command in Photoshop. For detailed information on creating images to be viewed online, see our Web Image Tutorial.
• Photos should be title *numerically*, in the order they are to appear, without spaces or special characters in the title, and the file extension in lowercase. We prefer 01.jpg, 02.jpg, 03.jpg, etc.
• A list of corresponding captions should accompany the photos. Not all photos need a caption, but the more information the better. Especially in group shows where it may not be evident who or what we're looking at.
• About captions: Initial words should be capitalized as well as all proper nouns. Declarative captions (i.e. sentence fragments) do not need ending periods, but any sentence, question or exclamation should be punctuated correctly. Please double-check your spelling & grammar. Event titles will be italicized (by us, using HTML), and art titles should be in double-quotes, i.e. "The Painting"
• Email your photos and captions to the web editor and wait patiently for her to put the post together.

Photos submitted directly to the web editor without prior arrangements are less likely to be published on our site. We understand spontaneous art event coverage though, so if you find yourself with a great set of pics from a great art event, by all means, contact us.

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