Hi all, just wanted to introduce ourselves: I am Julia Szabo with FestivalClick. We offer a fresh solution for applying to Art Festivals and managing those applications. We care about the Art Festival community and really want to make everyone successful. We have a small development team and I am one of the co-founders.
In addition to being an Artist (a Crafter really), I volunteer and attend many Art Festivals here in N. California. ArtFairInsiders has been a great resource while developing our software (I pretty much read most your posts and comments).
Please check out our website www.festivalclick.com and register. We welcome your feedback and promise that we will always listen and get back to you. My e-mail is julia@festivalclick.com. Hope to meet you online or in person.
Comments
Not true about the other systems image size. JAS requires 2000 so the shows have images that can be used for publicity. They left the 1400 there at my request because for the first 5 or so years that was the size they asked for, and then reduced the images to 700 to show the jurors. The shows complained that the 1400 was too small so they changed it to 2000. The only reason it says 1400 is because I prepared images for thousands of artists initially and if the system ever crashed they would have to upload the 1400 pixel images I created for them. The 4000 is for a different purpose all together. They have a contract with a book publisher that requires 4000 pixel images for their publications.
ZAPP says 1400 for some reason beyond comprehension. If artists upload 1400 pixel images zapp will add a 520 pixel black border making their jury images almost 1/3 smaller than their competition.
If you can't guaranty that verticals will display exactly the same size as horizontals your system will fail or not even get off the ground. For artists, it's about the images not what you're providing as the rest of the system. Their jury images can get them accepted or rejected from shows and could prevent them from earning a living if not displayed properly.
I was mentioning slideroom. I was applying to a photography competition at the Phila Museum of Art and they were using slideroom. I had a new body of work that were all verticals but when I saw the preview, I deleted my application and called them. They told me that they had heard from a number of photographers that weren't going to apply because their vertical images were at a disadvantage and they wouldn't be using slideroom again.
I'm still open to giving you feedback but you'll have to make sure the images are displayed fairly or we're both wasting time.
Larry Berman
Hi Larry,
Thank you so much for your feedback.
The image upload is under the Resume tab in Photo Library. In Resume view you can preview images exactly how the Jury will see under "Jury's View".
The other systems are requiring 1400 pixels or 1400X4000 pixels but no minimum size, just under 5MB. Therefore unless Artists upload a larger size, the image can still be pixelated.
We do not limit image sizes but encourage Artists to upload the largest and best quality images, under 5MB.
Our approach is different as we offer Artists to created Resumes for different type of Festivals or mediums, and those Resumes will populate the application with editable fields. So Artists will not have to fill out each Applications over and over again. That will save a lot of time and be very beneficial to them.
Thank you,
Julia Szabo
www.festivalclick.com
Finally found where to upload an image but it was asking for too much information before it let me upload it. But now I can't find it. And after it uploaded it only showed me a partial image cutting off the bottom half until I clicked and enlarged it.
Years ago I had an argument with slideroom because they only showed a horizontal crop of vertical images in preview, making it next to impossible to choose a set for jurying. They eventually changed the system to show the entire image in the preview.
You need to create a profile on zapp and on jas and upload images and apply to a show on each system (without completing the application) so you can see how simple it is to manage the images and insert them into an application.
Any new system needs to be at least as simple to survive.
Larry Berman
412-401-8100
You can call me tomorrow and I'll go over it with you.
Like I pointed out, the most important part of a jury process for artists is their images. There needs to be a tab for images or image bank or portfolio or whatever you want to call it, but make it intuitive.
There is no such thing as scaling that doesn't loose resolution as long as the largest size possibly needed is what's uploaded. Enlarging jpegs pixelates them. Then you're not taking into account the horizontal vs. vertical problem. Artists with vertical artwork images are at a severe disadvantage without constraining horizontal images because all viewing devices are horizontal. If you stop and think about it they can only display the same size if the viewed size is no larger than the vertical height of the viewing device. I'm the one that created the zapp image format of 1920 with black borders so horizontals and verticals displayed exactly the same size.
JAS shows 700 pixel images to the jurors so all devices can see them without scrolling. ZAPP changed their monitor jurying size from 700 to 750 and all of a sudden they cut off the tops and bottoms of each vertical image. Instead of rolling it back to 700, they run a program that looks at your device viewing resolution and makes horizontal and vertical images display the same, in most cases under 700 so they didn't gain anything by changing image size.
Larry Berman
Http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
Hi Larry, you can upload images under the Resumes tab: either by uploading to Photo Library or direct into the Resume.
We use Filestack for image uploads that are stored on Amazon cloud servers. Filestack is a modern technology and is fully responsive to Juror’s screen sizes without losing quality. Pictures can be up to 5MB and we have no minimum pixel requirements. Artists can crop the images as they wish. Of course we also encourage to use the best quality pictures when applying.
We would love to have your feedback if you have time to chat in person.
Thank you,
Julia
I signed up to see about the image specification but I can't find a place to upload images. Maybe it's not ready yet. But you need to understand that jurying and acceptance to art shows is all about the images, not the words typed into the computer. Juried Art Services seems to understand this better than ZAPP. I've been a consultant to both systems and JAS seems to listen more. Let me kniw if I've missed anything about uploading images and image requirements.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
Julia,
I appreciate you taking the time to explain. And of course what you say is logical.
But I still see some problems with it.
Hi Julia,
Best wishes and good luck.
Mary Strope,
Chief Operating Officer
Juried Art Services
As an expert in photography as well as computer systems, I shall make a few comments.
1) viewing my jury images on their own, home computer monitor is a bad idea.
A) Their monitors are most likely not calibrated to accurately display my artwork.
ie. I just went through trying to show a professional print shop how to calibrate their system so it did not show a photograph of a wall, which was in a light brown and grey, instead changing it to magenta. Making the photo look bad. Completely different due to incorrect calibration.
B) Their systems are not secured as to security of my artwork.
Hence might be easy to be hack or compromised.
I want my jurying done in a controlled environment with controlled systems.
C) Your systems are not secured to guarantee the secure control and inability of dissemination of my artwork.
If they are open to so many people, via network, I doubt they are all on VPNs.
You may choose to "trust them on that" but you are trusting them with OUR possessions.
What prevents said juror from having friends over to help them select the right artists? Maybe their 10 year old kids, advise them?
I want my jurying done in a controlled environment with controlled systems.
If I were unethical, I would apply to be a juror for your shows. I could then jury in all the photogs who would not be competition for me. And jury out all the photogs who might be too competitive for me.
Jurors have a standard that they adhere to and we need to trust them on that.
Here are the benefits of remote jurying for the Artists:
It can prevent Juror’s fatigue because they don’t need to sit in a room for hours to go through hundreds of pictures.
They may also be more authentic as there is no peer pressure onsite.
Promoters have a bigger Juror pool to choose from as there is no time or geographical constraint.
FestivalClick allows to designate different Jurors for each, some or all categories so they have the best qualifications for those categories.
Modern monitors are reliable for presenting crisp images. The most important thing is to have good photographs.
-Julia
julia@festivalclick.com
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