‘Shoot a Miner’ (or SAM as we’ve come to know it) is the Melbourne Silver Mine’s annual portraiture event.
SAM asks our members to get together and shoot one another. SAM is a community building exercise. Getting together, meeting members you haven’t had the chance to and shooting, these are the things that SAM likes.
You can get to know your fellow members by organising a traditional portrait sitting. Use SAM as a convenient excuse to approach members whose work (or face) you’ve admired. Make arrangements to work on a collaboration. Or simply shoot some candid captures of our members at a meet.
We aren’t going to dictate what a portrait is. We invite you push the envelope. Use SAM as an opportunity to be inventive, to step out of your usual photographic style or to try your hand at a different technique.
The images that are submitted to SAM2011 will be put together into a presentation which we call The Night Of SAM. Only one screening of SAM is planned, so get out those diaries.
Here comes the detail
Participation in Shoot a Miner 2011 is free for MSM members.
Copyright of the images submitted remains yours at all times – your participation and submission of images simply gives the Melbourne Silver Mine the right to use your images to create the material used to present the work. We may want to use the odd image to promote the event in the future, but we will ask permission for that anyway.
There are no restrictions on the number of members you can shoot (we have 91 today, so go nuts). But we ask that you submit no more than 3 shots of each member you shoot. Use your head with that rule, if you are only submitting a few images, a couple of extras wont matter.
To participate
Images to be included in the SAM2011 screening will need to be submitted to us in digitised form by June 30th 2011. The easiest way to submit your images is by adding them to the SAM Flickr group.
Any images that wasn’t in last year’s SAM and taken some time since April 15, 2010 is OK by us.
Out-of-towner? SAM hasn’t forgotten about you. As you may not have another miner to shoot please feel free to submit some self portraits. If there is anything we can do to help you get in touch with local miners, then please, do ask.
But surely there are prizes?!
Apart from the pleasure of being part of something? Well, yes actually, there are.
Various prizes will be awarded on the screening night. These will not necessarily be based on ‘quality’ of submitted work. Participate and you could win.
I know we just said that quality isn’t a consideration, but we are a talented bunch, and quality tends to emerge. This is fairly apparent in Karen Riley’s quite mesmerising portrait of Maxi, winner of the ‘people’s choice’ award in SAM2010.
maxi
photographer: Karen Riley
Hasselblad 500C/M, Fuji Acros 100, Rodinal.
The Night of SAM!
Shoot a miner will culminate in a gala screening at Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale Street Melbourne on Wednesday 13th July 2011. (facebook Event)
We will leave you with some shots of the 2010 Night Of Sam, courtesy of Scott and his trusty Canon EOS5. You may also derive pleasure from perusing the pool of images that made up SAM2010 via its very own flickr group.
