When he was barely more than a pup, Butters
managed to chew off his own collar
Nothing against cats or their people, but our next theme for our lovely little readers' pictures portfolio is "Dogs." Any picture that has a dog in it in some way, shape, or form is eligible. It does not have to be your dog. You do not need a model release; you do not need the model's permission; dogs are chill. The prize is a copy of the new March 2025 Phaidon reprint of DogDogs by Elliott Erwitt, first published in 1998. As ever, the hope is we'll have some fun.
How to Submit
This is a call for your own work, and you must own the rights to it, so please don't send me anything but. By submitting, you give me permission to reproduce the small JPEG of your picture on TOP and that's it. Your copyright remains yours at every stage.
To submit, send me a picture in an email and use the subject line:
BDDog
Just like that...no spaces, spelled exactly like that, no variations. Case sensitive. Dog, singular. Capital "D" in "Dog." Two D's! The reason is that when I begin building the post, I will search my large email stack for that phrase as the subject, and if your email doesn't come up, then I won't see your picture.
Please pay attention to that. Each time, almost everyone does...and almost nothing gets lost. But there's always that guy. Don't be that guy.
But if you are that guy and have to resubmit, no worries. Just please include everything in the resubmission—generally, any submission sent in multiple different emails will confuse me too much, and I reserve the right to pretend I'm ignoring it when actually I lost it.
I'll announce the deadline when we get near it. I usually like to get at least 100 submissions. I'll leave it open for five days minimum, maybe longer. Oh, and this time I'll include a picture of my own, but probably in a separate post so it doesn't mess up the 12+1 pictures concept.
Email one JPEG*, 800 pixels wide, saved in sRGB. Include in the email your name, where you live, any technical details you care to share, your website URL if you want me to publish it, and a paragraph containing whatever you want to tell other TOP readers about your picture.
Lots of people write a paragraph explaining their picture (see the "Yellow" portfolio** for examples), so if you don't, just be aware that your picture might seem a little "naked" after it gets picked. (Because of course yours will get picked.)
My email address is mcjohnston at mac dot com. Replace the "at" and the "dot" with the proper symbols and get rid of the spaces. This modest attempt at disguising my address will not fool the web-crawling bots, but oh well.
So, five components:
"BDDog" in the SUBJECT LINE;
PICTURE (must be your own!), 800 pixels wide in sRGB;
NAME;
WHERE YOU LIVE;
Any COMMENTS you care to make about the shot.
And please put it all in one email, never two or more.
Hope you are up to the challenge! Have fun and don't be afraid to be creative. Remember that just because you love a dog doesn't necessarily mean it's a good picture, but photographs of loved dogs are certainly not discouraged. We're among friends. :-)
Mike
*You might feel the impulse to "improve your chances" by submitting more than one, but I've been doing this for a while, and my observation has been that when people send, say, three submissions, usually all three of them are on the weak side. That is, they're making up in quantity what they lack in quality. That doesn't work. This has not always been the case with multiple submissions, though, so if you're tempted to take this judgement personally, please don't!
**I'd say the Yellow Portfolio is my personal favorite of the Baker's Dozens so far.
B&H Photo
Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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