The Pool Grant is back for 2012
April 13 2012, 6:50 am | | 9 Comments
Sydney-based photography collective Pool is once again showing its support to emerging photographic talent with the 2012 $10,000 Pool Grant.
Pool created the Pool Grant in 2009 as a way of giving back to the photographic community. Specifically aimed at emerging talent, the grant’s aim is to help fund the development of an artist by way of providing $10,000 toward the fulfillment of a project.
The jury will consist of Pool photographers Sean Izzard, Simon Harsent, Danny Eastwood, Christopher Ireland and Ingvar Kenne.
Entries close midnight 22 April with the winner announced on 24 May at the Pool Grant Exhibition which is part of the Head On Photo Festival. For more information and to enter thepoolgrant.com
9 Comments
Just what we need locally, more young talent to compete for the non-existent work, or the existent work at a tenth of the cost, with no usage rights, and a favour thrown in for the agency twice a year that will never be repaid with that big job in the future.
You know, it’s just for the web.
Give ’em the $10K to leave the country and build their careers offshore. Now that would be an intelligent marketing strategy for a content production company.
The negativity on this site is out of control. Swimmer drown in your own pool of sh**. Well done pool for being proactive and encouraging and positive. Love ya work. Harsent owes me lunch 🙂 jf
@Harsent Izzard lover
So it’s ‘positive’ when we encourage more people to enter a workplace already overcrowded and painfully unable to sustain the talented working artists who have already paid their dues but are being undermined by an industry determined to destroy itself with downward pressure on production to increase the profits of the agencies and their holding companies, but it’s ‘negative’ to tell the truth about the reality of the current marketplace, and suggest that putting up $10K to encourage even greater competition from youngsters who will be willing to do the work at a tenth of the cost a year from now may be a failed idea?
With this kind of redefinition of the English language, you should be working for the Ministry of Propaganda, not pitching for lunch from photographers, and by the way, I liked your argument allot better in the original German.
Everything’s a tough slog.
The photographers getting paid $15k (of which they make about 7-10) for a job are the ones I really feel sorry for. They really came down to make it happen, make it look like a favour… Never mind the ones earning $30+k for a days shoot.
How many people do you know earn $10k a month?
Most decent photographers do.
First world problems.
What a bunch of trolls you lot are. Pool are offering a really good incentive for young emerging talent and all you guys can do is find negativity in it. Maybe these are comments more from worried old industry folk, who fear for their jobs because they aren’t as good as the young ones coming through.
If your argument is going to be on an overcrowded industry, then maybe Uni’s and TAFE should stop teaching courses as well, increase the amount of unemployment and stop people from being proactive and trying to achieve their ultimate job. Go and retire, you have obviously lost all inspiration for the industry and now just sit angrily at your desk, wishing you were back being a 20-something again.
Great work Pool, I for one will be applying.
Gee, Beaver, Mike’s applying to the Pool contest. Whadda ya say we take some keen pictures and try our luck too?!
If we win, we can use the money to buy a 5D and some lights and start our own production company. I think that’s all it takes, right?
There’s always going to be room for new talent. It’s absurd to take the point of view that encouraging new talent is a folly.
The remarkable thing is that in this case, the encouragement is not coming from a Government dept or an industry body but a bunch of guys who run a real business. Clearly they are not worried about the competition eh?
@Swimmer. Don’t you think the rise and rise of image libraries is more of a worry?
That’s the kind of competition you should be worried about… the kind that (usually) sucks out creativity, originality and a potential shoot. Stock is 100% predictable (you know exactly what you’re getting for your money) and much, much cheaper than ‘shot to brief’ – what’s not for a client to love?
Personally, I find that clients more and more so expect a Mac’d up layout with a stock shot – and would much rather make that, than create something more original. I’ve even had clients do their own Getty search and send the comp files over!
Pool definitely have their heads and hearts in the right place. Champion the fresh stuff. It’s good for all of us.
Fellow Swimmer and Aussie Crawl must be having real trouble keeping their heads above water if they’re threatened by this. A grant of $10,000 supporting emerging talent in ANY industry should be encouraged. Some enthusiastic youngster with a camera, an idea and a fistful of dollars isn’t going to hurt anyone. Well not anyone of any standing anyway.
Unfortunately for photographers though, there have been significant changes to the industry that have made conditions a lot tougher. The advent of digital demystified photography and made it accessible to the masses. Sadly it’s no longer considered the artform it once was. Of course the relative ease of becoming a ‘professional photographer’ these days has caused an influx of new talent. Simple supply and demand dictates that it’s now a buyer’s market – that’s what photographers entering the industry need to understand, and what those already in it need to accept and adapt to.
@I’m with Mike
Finally , an intelligent comment, and yes, while the previous entries were admittedly a bit cynical, they were intended to provoke on a topic of some real interest.
Good on Pool for encouraging young talent and new stars, but if they were honest about the reality of the marketplace at present, they’d tell you that this exercise was as much a PR opportunity for their existing photographers/directors, most of whom, even at the top of the local market are underemployed, and increasingly underpaid, as it is an altruistic endeavour for the creative future of the industry.
It’s a positive branding opportunity for Pool, but don’t think for a moment that any of the five partners plus their capable producer are hopeful of a new creative star who may win their competition coming into the market to take the jobs that they would all prefer to turn down for the newer, slimmer budgets, and in doing so help the agencies with their warfare on creative production to increase the corporate bottom line.