Contemporary Photography Exception Exhibition

Last month, when I wrote about Pacific New Media's 2015 Contemporary Photography in Hawaii exhibition, I blathered on about how much photography had changed, and how smartphones were the primary way most people captured and shared images.

How fun would it be if a husband and wife, an Instagrammer and an avid iPhonographer, placed alongside people with Leica M-9s and other fancy cameras and lenses? So I decided to encourage my wife to enter the competition, and submitted some photos myself.

In the end, they received 506 entries from 136 photographers, and only 50 images were accepted for the exhibition. We didn't make the cut, but I did appreciate the gentle notification:

We regret to inform you that your work was not selected for the exhibition, but we strongly encourage you to submit again next year. The juror tried to balance content, creativity, and vision with attention to the potential final presentation. The exhibition was crafted from all submitted works with an eye towards creating a stimulating, engaging exhibition. We understand that it takes considerable time and energy to generate your works and prepare your submission. The jurying process was as fair as possible, but due to space limitations, many strong works did not make the final cut.

I'd like to think our entries constituted "strong works," but let's face it, we're amateurs. But we'll still try to check out the final selected works at the exhibition, which will run from April 3 to 25 at The Arts at Marks Garage. And we'll still try again in 2016.

But since my wife and I have already gone through the trouble of picking out some favorites from our last year of iPhone-based photography, I figured I might as well share them here. Consider this the inaugural Hawaii Blog Photography Exhibition, featuring curated works by Jen and me.