My experience at Review LA

This comes from Eric Bickford and is valuable reading:

“Just beginning to come down and re-compose myself after a weekend at ReviewLA which included some very valuable reviews of my work and three separate trips to PhotoLA.
I had four 20-minute reviews, back to back, with five minutes between. The staff tries to put your reviews close together so you're not driving over to Santa Monica for twenty minute review and then home and back again in six hours, etc. But I barely had time to leave by the north door and circle back to enter the south door, between these important sessions. Whew. I wrote as fast as I could while the reviewers talked and I can actually read most of it.
I took 16 images to show, mounted and matted. I had ordered a very nice presentation case from Light Impressions and paid a heavy price for it to be sent overnight, three days before the event. When I didn't see any evidence of movement using the tracking number, I called them and they told me it was on back order and would be available in two weeks. Well, like, thanks. Canceled the order. What to do? My framer had a beautiful black case he uses to present moldings and matts, and he cleaned it out and gave it to me for the weekend. It was probably better than the one I had ordered.
All reviews had value. I thought I needed some fine tuning and discovered that no-o-o-o-o-o...I need to go back to the beginning and re-think everything I've done and am doing. Got a lot of good ideas about concept.
One very valuable review: Mary Virginia Swanson, who consults with photographers about how to sell. She had studied my website and had a whole list of questions and thoughts when I sat down. I kept fingering the latches on the case and finally asked her if she wanted to see the photos. She said "No need, Eric. I saw everything you've got, the way strangers see it, on the site, in my hotel room last evening."
Crista Dix of the Wallspace Gallery in Seattle said she's seeing a lot of what I'm presenting and I need a new slant. Not easy to hear but very very valuable.
Ann Jastrab of Rayko in San Francisco was hip and friendly and casual and invited me to submit for a Fall show. She pointed out the images she favored -- that I should use in my submittal. She took one of my images which I have always framed and presented horizontally and turned it so it was vertical. "Better" she said.

PhotoLA was incredible. I was there on all three days. I walked around for hours on Friday just absorbing the ambiance. Gallery reps standing at parade rest, up on their toes and back, memorizing their pitches, fresh and ready to go. In three or four of the spaces there were pale vegan men in metal-framed glasses wearing wool suits and bow ties, scanning the crowds for disposable income. On Saturday I started looking at the attendees as much as the work on the walls. Platoons of scruffy youngsters unable to speak because the slang they wanted to use hadn't been developed yet. Aging hipsters with biker headscarves covering the wrinkles on their foreheads. The oxymoron battalion wearing both peace symbols and skulls. Skinny unshaven young men with Armani Exchange tee-shirts and Nikon D200s around their necks getting a lot of rolling eyes as they tried to hand out business cards to every gallery manager in the place. Thin women pushing strollers, one with a toddler chewing on the corners of the show catalogue on his chest. On Sunday I strapped on the iPod and combined the photographs all around with ZZ Top and Robert Palmer. "Addicted to love", indeed. It was a most addictive atmosphere.
It was clear that the show had been planned before the financial crash and mounted afterward and there was talk among my fellows that all the money which might make such a show successful had dried up since September. And then there were the barnyard animals. One of the photographers took photos of various barnyard animals (Not in the catalogue -- I have reached out to my fellow attendees for the name -- no luck) and composited them together so it looked as though they were standing in a group, posing, having just graduated from . A donkey, two sheep, a dog, three ducks, a goat, two chickens, a cow, etc. All calm and looking at the camera. There were two versions of this. One in the daytime and one, lit, after dark, called "Opening Night". These photos were in editions of ten, for $3000 apiece. And as the days went on, we saw one red dot after another lined up at the lower right corner, indicating that the editions were selling out.

I'm tempted to say "I'm not worthy" but what I think I'll say instead is "I'm not ready." Oh, well. Onward and upward.”