Photo-Related Things

I just want to note that I've been posting quite regularly on my "Photo Blog:" SteveStenzel.blogspot.com. Here are a few recent bits of good photo-related news (starting with the most recent, and going back in time):

• "Director's Award:" earlier this month, I had a photograph that I made of the George Floyd memorial get accepted to a juried exhibition and win the "director's award." I didn't post anything about that on social media for 3-4 days because I was processing this white boy winning an award for photographing scenes surrounding a black man's death. It had a "this doesn't feel quite right" element to it. A check just arrived a few days ago as part of the award, and I'll be donating that to an appropriate cause. See more in this post.

(Side note: I'll be having more photos from the memorial / riots from the last few weeks in more upcoming exhibitions as well. There's something happening tonight as a virtual pop-up exhibition. I'll have more on all of this shortly after it's official over on my photo blog.)

• "Bare Men" exhibition: I had a photograph accepted to a juried/curated exhibition in Brooklyn last year. Here are some photos of the installation. And then it was turned into a virtual exhibition for 6 weeks as well. There was also a nice exhibition catalog created as well.

• An older piece in "The Poetry of the Ordinary:" again, I had another piece accepted to a juried exhibition in Vermont a few months back. Here are some photos of the gallery, and here are some photos of the digital and physical catalog that accompanied the show.

What I like about these last 3 juried shows is that I had 3 different pieces in them. Sometimes, it feels like I'm "banking" on that one good shot - and I think that's a pretty common feeling among artists / photographers. "Well great... I made this ONE interesting photo 8 years ago, and it's exhibiting well, but can I make ANOTHER decent photo?!?"

• Recognition from my job: the news of my "Bare Men" piece and my "Poetry of the Ordinary" piece made it into Hamline's newsletter and email blast.

• Portfolio Book: here are some photos of a portfolio book I recently created from my 4 a.m. work. It turned out well. It's not something for sale, but just something to help me show my work to people / galleries.

• Photos of cute kids: I helped out at my sons' school and got to see my photo on a billboard. And other photos from that shoot have been popping up in the parish bulletin and Facebook page. It was NOT a job I was super comfortable doing, so I'm happy they got some usable images.

Anyway, check out some of those links if you're interested, or just go to stevestenzel.blogspot.com and scroll through the first 4 main pages to see all of that and more (on a "non-mobile" browser at least).