Open Letter to Photographers

RULE CHANGE for 2011: Slides are no longer accepted for WIEP projected image sections.

This letter was sent personally to all 2010 slide entrants to provide advanced notice of our policy change. We include it here for any exhibitors who last entered slides prior to last year.

June 2010

Dear WIEP exhibitor,

Thank you for supporting WIEP over the years by entering our annual juried exhibition. You are receiving this notice because you recently entered slides for one of our projected image sections.

As a successful photographer you are aware that digital photography has been rapidly gaining in popularity for projected images over traditional slides. We have resisted dropping slides until now despite the burden that dual media has imposed on our systems and volunteers. However, following a review of the trends for our own exhibition (only 5% of projected images this year and falling), as well as discussions with other exhibitions, the decision has been made to stop accepting slides from the 2011 exhibition onwards.

Our discussions with PSA about their plans were influential in our decision. PSA indicates that they will probably phase out support for slides in their annual exhibition in either 2011 or 2012. Whatever we might think about the pros and cons of the different media…the time has come.

Since this decision directly affects you, we wanted to let you know as early as possible. Obviously you can use a scanner or a professional service/lab to create a digitized copy of slides that you are happy with and continue to enter our PSA recognized projected image sections that way. In support of this our specification for digital images is also changing in 2011 to permit a higher quality than was possible in previous years (it will be 1050 x 1050 pixels and 1000 kB using new projectors).

Our new Web site at http://www.wiep-photo.org, launched last year, was very successful (nearly 90% of 2010 individual entries were online) and is being further improved for next year. This site will open for 2011 entries at the beginning of September 2010.

Again, thank you for your past support and we look forward to seeing your entries in the 78th Wilmington International Exhibition of Photography.

Sincerely,

Dianne Carnegie
WIEP Chair