Hi all ! hi Guy I appreciate the enthusiasm about Christmas cards swap and I really like the idea. Nevertheless, I would add my 2 cents on this topic and maybe bring a little of my experience of printswaps, even if I must appear just a little distant of Guy's optimism ;-)..
I was lucky to participate in 4 pinhole printswaps and among these 4, I was the coordinator for 2 of them : the "Zero 200" swap in 2000 and the "Group 1" print swap this year (not yet completed !). About these 4 swaps, I am happy to say that they all have been marvellous experiences and that they created some kinds of links between some of the participants ! it is a real pleasure to receive such a variety of prints (some I like, some I do not...) and kind and/or interesting statements. It's also a pleasure to work on making prints which you send all over the world ! That's for the good part. ...but completing a print swap is not always so easy as it seems to be... A print swap implies some guidelines or rules of participation which have to be shared by everybody in the swap ! This makes a great difference with a completely "free" and "open" system as the Internet Photographic Handmade Postcard Trading List which is "managed" by George L. Smyth (see at http://members.home.net/hmpi/ . My experience of printswaps and more precisely for the 2 swaps which I coordinated shows that the deadline is never respected, (even when we have plenty of time before us) and that when the number of participants increases the difficulties for getting the swap completed also increase. It's why I would like to comment on some of Guy's positions : > I did find them and they cover exactly what we have at the moment, (except that the > maximum size for that swap was 8x10). OK, this rule about size is generally respected; do we need to agree on a specific "postcard" size (4"x6") ? Do we decide that these Christmas cards will be sent as "postcards" without envelopes or are we just going towards prints sent in envelopes with accompanying letters ? in this case what would be the difference with a regular printswap "tuned" on Christmas time ? > In the present case, I suppose that a topic that was related to Christmas or New > Year celebrations would be appropriate, but let's hear what others feel. I don't really understand what would be a topic related to Christmas or new year; how can one decide if he (she) is off-topic or not ? > We should also agree on a deadline for mailing the cards. I would propose that this > be around December 1st. This would give us a couple of months to choose/make the > negative to print from and enough time for the cards to be in before Christmas. This schedule appears to me optimistic, not to say probably un-realistic ! Guy, you have been moderator for one of the 2001 Printswap groups, along with James Kellar and myself and you perfectly know that we have been unable to keep the deadlines ! Remember : 12/19 2000 : first allusion about a 2001 printswap by James Kellar. It took almost 2 months to have all participants shared in 3 Groups and the different rules expressed : on 02/09/2001, James launched the swap and we had decided all together for a reasonable deadline : May 20. That means we thought (and you Guy, you had your voice in this decision) that we needed more than 3 months to complete the swap (this had been determined from the analysis of the 2 previous print swaps of 1999 and 2000). When the deadline May 20 arrived, none of our 3 groups had been completed (by the way, neither you, nor I, though being moderators, had sent our prints :-)) ). Now, at the beginning of October, 4 months after deadline, 8 months after launch of the swap, there are still 3 participations missing in group 1 (on a total of 15 participants!) and probably some other missing in Groups 1 and 2... It's why, if the deadline is around December 1st, it seems nearly certain that it will not be respected... > My count so far on the registration page is 21 participants. I think that this > should be a manageable number for everybody. If the list of participants becomes > too large, there may be a need to break the project into two groups, as we did in > the Spring. By experience such a number of participants is "heavy" to manage and to do all the work (print making, packing, sending...).12 or 15 people is still a pleasure when 21 really begins to be hard work, time-and money consuming . I presume it would be a good idea to do as we did at the beginning of this year : make smaller groups with a moderator for each group. As a conclusion, I would say that I really wish to get involved in a next printswap but it seems to me that the present project for Christmas cards is "floating"between a new "printswap" (not necessary Christmas or postcards) and a more fluent system : a list of snail mail addresses where everybody who wants to send and receive pinhole postcards may freely organize his (her) participation (more like George Smyth's handmade photo list, but with a single rule : pinhole photography). Maybe we can open the 2 options : - free exchange list : fast to start, maximum freedom for everybody (everyone chooses the volume of work he wants to do), ready for Christmas" time + - preparation of a new pinhole Printswap : to be effective for beginning of 2002; rules to establish together, several groups if necessary. Another advantage is that it would allow us to complete the 2001 swaps and to carry on our thinking about how to make the works realized for these swaps visible by a greater number of people... Sorry to have been so long ! Your comments, critics, proposals are welcome ! Be certain that in any case I shall be happy to participate and that I'll do what I can to help for the success ! Cheers from France, Jean ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Jean Daubas, auteur-photographe 16 rue de Bourg-Sec 25440 LIESLE France tél. 03 81 57 50 13 / 06 81 53 12 89 [email protected] ----- Original Message ----- From: "Guy Glorieux" <[email protected]> To: "Pinhole List" <pinhole-discussion@p at ???????> Sent: Monday, October 01, 2001 11:46 AM Subject: [pinhole-discussion] Re: Pinhole Christmas Card Swap
