One Exposure: Night Photography

I recently stumbled across an on-line, juried, pay-to-contribute gallery called One Exposure. Basically, it's a juried showcase for photographs. They have a gallery of night photographs which is worth browsing (don't forget to click the NEXT button at the bottom to view additional pages). If you're interested in participating, make sure you read the FAQ's. I didn't make the effort to sort out all the reasons why you should become a paying member, much less the difference between the different levels of membership. But this arrangement might be of interest to some people.

(Twin Light by Mauro Mendula)

This brings up an interesting question about the difference between free photo sites (such as Flickr) and pay-to-contribute juried sites such as OneExposure. Anyone who has browsed sites such as Flickr, Zooomr or SmugMug knows that quantity does not equal quality. There's a ton of junk out there. But these sites also give you the tools to sort through the junk and find the high quality work. For example, on Flickr you can limit your browsing to "contacts" whose work you respect. There's also third-party tools such as FlickRiver which sort photographs based on Flickr's secret "Interestingness" formulas.

Then there's juried sites. For many years The Nocturnes has been hosting juried competitions of night photography for a nominal fee. The galleries are free to browse, and they often include some interesting new photographers. For example, The Nocturnes is currently collecting entries for a contest of night panoramas.

Although I don't plan to pay to contribute to One Exposure, their galleries are also free to browse, and there are some good photographs in there.