New Article on SEO for Photographers and 2 new shows

By admin | Published: March 15, 2012

I’ve just posted a new article I’ve written entitled “SEO for Photographer Websites” – if you have an artist website (or any sort of business website), you’ll hopefully find it useful in learning how best to get search traffic to your website. Please feel free to comment below with any questions or to contact me directly, too!

Nightfall, Otter Cliffs, from Acadia National Park

"Nightfall, Otter Cliffs", Copyright Jim Nickelson

I’d like to announce two new Maine shows I’ll be participating in. I’ll be in the 2012 Maine Photography Show down in Boothbay Harbor — congratulations to Terry Hire, Felice Boucher, Jane  Yudelman, and everyone else who will be joining me! The opening is Friday, April 13th, from 5-7 pm and the show will run until May 5th.

I’m also very pleased to be included in the Third Annual Maine Art Scene Juried Virtual Art Exhibit. This is a virtual gallery and is particularly slick – it includes a wide variety of disciplines and you can take a virtual walk through the galleries. It is definitely recommended to take a look around as there is some really nice work in there. I’m honored to share a virtual wall with Kimberly Post Rowe and Mary Woodman, too!

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Posted in The Business of Photography | Comments closed

Hunger Moon

By admin | Published: March 13, 2012

February brought the Hunger Moon, one I’ve been looking forward to for many months as it is one of my favorite full moon names. I was able to photograph moonrise from the Park Loop Road in Acadia National Park (Hunger Moon I and III below) and moonset from a location here in Camden. (As a reminder, at the time of the full moon, moonrise happens near sunset and moonset happens near sunrise.) The moon was stunningly beautiful as it rose above Schoodic from my vantage point on MDI and I love the resulting photographs.

You can find out more about my Adventures in Celestial Mechanics project on my website (and can also see many more images). Please let me know what you think, as always!

"Hunger Moon I", Copyright Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved.

"Hunger Moon II", Copyright Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved.

"Hunger Moon III", Copyright Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved.

"Hunger Moon IV", Copyright Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved.

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Posted in New Work, The Dark Night (Night Photography) | Comments closed

Large Format Printing workshop at Maine Media

By admin | Published: March 12, 2012

"Last Light, Acadia", Copyright Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved.

This September I’ll be teaching a week-long workshop for Maine Media Workshops in neighboring Rockport. The workshop is entitled “Large Format Printing” and will cover all aspects of digital printing with special emphasis on the particular difficulties of larger prints. We’ll get out into the field for photography in beautiful Midcoast Maine as well, of course. The workshop runs from September 2nd to the 9th, and you can find more information on signing up and the wonderful Maine Media experience on their site.

I’ve been a fan and student of Maine Media for years and I’m incredibly excited to be part of their workshop faculty. If you have any questions about Maine Media or this workshop, I’m happy to answer any questions or to give you more information.

I have a new workshop page on my photography website, one with upcoming workshops I’ll be teaching and one with an overview of my various photography and fine art digital printing workshops.

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Calls for Entries March 2012

By admin | Published: February 27, 2012

Here are some of the upcoming exhibition opportunities or calls for entry for photographers, particularly those in Maine and New England. This list is certainly not exhaustive and reflects ones (usually) of particular interest to me. Thank you also to everyone who has sent me leads, too. There are a ton of good ones coming up – this time of year is one of the busiest with respect to calls for entries, based on my following of these for the last few years.

There are more than ever in this posting, but don’t panic! You obviously don’t have to enter all or any of them, but hopefully you’ll find some that make sense for you and your work. I know that I cannot afford (with time or money) to enter all of these myself, so I will be selective about my entries as well.

As always, please let me know in the comments if you have any other suggestions for this list!

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockport has a call for entries for their 2012 Biennial with entries due March 1st. Please note also that entries are physical proof-type prints that must be delivered by that date – it is not an online entry (but there is no entry fee). The Biennial will be co-curated by CMCA director Suzette McAvoy and independent curator Daphne Anderson Deeds. This is obviously one of the big shows this year in Maine and definitely recommended.

The PRC in Boston is having their prestigious 17th Annual Juried Exhibition, entitled “Exposure 2012″, with entries due March 2nd. The juror is Alison Nordström, Curator of Photographs and Director of Exhibitions at the George Eastman House. This is one I definitely recommend that all New England photographers consider.

The Vermont Photoplace Gallery has a few calls for entries up, including “Abstract Expressions” curated by Carl Chiarenza due March 5th and their annual PhotoPlace Open curated by Kyohei Abe and with entries due April 9th.

PX3 Prix de la Photographie Paris has its annual photo competition coming up, with an early bird entry of March 15th and a final deadline of April 15th. This one is not cheap, but I think it is one of the absolute best ones out there and definitely recommended.

Communication Arts has its photography competition with entries due March 16th. I don’t know much about this one but it looks promising if your work fits in. It seems to be geared towards photographers who work with designers and art directors.

The Santa Fe Workshops are having their semi-annual photo contest, this one entitled “Portraits”, with an early submission deadline of March 19th and a final deadline of April 30th.

The Darkroom Gallery in Essex Junction, Vermont has a call for submissions for “Night Light” (night photography) with a due date of March 21st.

The new Lyceum Gallery (in the former space of Gallery 5 in Lewiston) has a call for entries for “Through the Lens”, a fine art photography contest with entries due March 25th. The show last year had some great work and I look forward to seeing what is included this year.

Galerie Dufour in Belfast is having a call for entries for fine art nudes by Maine residents entitled “Primavera”, with a deadline of March 31st for photography (there is a separate call for other types of art).

The Griffin Museum of Photography of Massachusetts has their 18th Annual Juried Photography Exhibition with entries due March 31st. Another highly recommended one for New England exposure.

The Detroit Center for Contemporary Photography is having a call for entries entitled Change of Pace 2012, curated by David Bram of Fraction Magazine, with a deadline of March 31st. This one looks pretty intriguing.

This is not a call for entries or a contest, but on April 10th online registration begins for the New England Portfolio Reviews down at BU in Boston. I went to these last year and had a very good experience and hope to go again this year.

The Minneapolis Photo Center has a call for entry for Portraits: Up Close and Personal, with entries due April 15th.

The ipa (International Photography Awards) has their annual photo contest coming up with early entries due April 30th and a final deadline of May 31st. This is another very prestigious one and worth considering.

Another very nice one is the Photography Portfolio Competition 2012 from the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art with entries due May 4th.

The Viewpoint Photographic Arts Center in Sacramento, California, is accepting proposals for solo or group exhibitions right now with submissions due May 18th. These submissions are for exhibitions that will run between February 2013 and January 2014. Viewpoint is a non-profit organization serving the Sacramento region and their is no fee for on-time proposals.

B&W + Color Magazine has their next call for entries coming up, this one the B&W single image contest 2013 with entries due between April 1st and June 30th. You can’t submit yet but I thought I’d mention it for people trying to plan out (and budget) their entries.

The international contest entitled “The Art of Photography Show” in San Diego has entries due June 30th.

Good luck!

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Maine Photographers Represent in B&W + Color Magazine’s 2012 Single Image Contest

By admin | Published: February 21, 2012

"Pyrotechnic #12", Copyright Jim Nickelson. All Rights Reserved.

The most recent B&W + Color Magazine has just come out with the results of their annual Color Single Image Contest. I was very pleased to see that one of my images (above) received a Merit Award in the Pattern/Texture category. (You can see other of my Pyrotechnic series images here and here).

"Lost Highways", Copyright Sharon Arnold. All Rights Reserved.

But I was just as pleased to see how many other Maine photographers were found in this issue, including many friends and clients. Sharon Arnold received a Gold Award in the Metaphor/Abstract category (see photo above). Felice Boucher joined her in that category with a Merit Award. Robert Moran ended up with 5(!) selected photographs, garnering a Silver Award, two Bronzes, and two Merits. Mary Woodman also had a Gold Award to go along with her two Merits. Jane Yudelman joined the fun with a Merit award of her own, as did Lynn Karlin. Carol MacLeod also had a Silver Award and a Merit Award and LeeAnne Mallonee nabbed a Bronze and a Merit. Congratulations to all of the photographers selected!

I know that all of these contests are subjective and you can only take their meaning so far, but I see this sort of result as further confirmation of the rich and vibrant photography community here in Maine. Those of us who live here already knew about that, but I’m happy to see others taking notice as well.

You can see a copy of the magazine cover below if you want to find it on the magazine racks:

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Posted in Client Shows, For Photographers, In the News, See My Work | Comments closed

A Book Cover, Starry Night, and the VoxPhotographs blog

By admin | Published: February 12, 2012

I was very pleased to learn that my image was selected for the catalog cover for the upcoming exhibition at the PhotoPlace Gallery in Vermont. You can order the catalog here (and browse through all the images) and you can find out more about the upcoming “Four Seasons” exhibition here. I sprung for the hardcover, of course!

On Friday I published a guest article on the VoxPhotographs blog on selecting a paper for fine art printing. Please check it out if you missed it (and bookmark that blog, too, as it has become one of the go-to sites for the Maine fine art photography community). Thank you to Heather Frederic for the platform as well.

Lastly, I’d like to link to something on the Web that I found. Petros Vrellis created an animation of Van Gogh’s Starry Night (perhaps my favorite painting) that is very cool on its own, but the animation is interactive – users can use their fingers to change the flow of stars, etc. Alas, the video itself isn’t interactive but it does show how the interaction works – I’d love to see a commercially-available version of this. It would make a great iPad app if it has the necessary computational horsepower to perform all the calculations.

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Posted in In the News, See My Work, The Paper Chase (Printing Blog) | Comments closed

Embracing Rejection: Thoughts on Juried Exhibitions & Contests

By admin | Published: February 2, 2012

"Wolf Moon II", Copyright Jim Nickelson

I’ve been thinking about juried competitions quite a bit recently – I’ve been entering many (and getting in a few), and most of my photographic friends and clients are doing the same.

Before I go on, I’d like to clarify that I believe that juried events are valuable to artists, particularly emerging artists. The obvious potential benefit (and the reason most people submit) is that getting your work in front of jurors, receiving an award or selection, and having work included in an online or physical exhibition can all result in exposure of your work to people who may be able to help advance your career. Another benefit is that selections will help fill out your artistic resume or CV and may help establish credibility and/or seriousness as an artist.

I’ve also found that for me personally, the process of selecting work to submit is a valuable exercise in editing, and who among us doesn’t need more practice with editing our own work? (If you get in the habit of frequently entering exhibitions & contests, however, your costs in time, money, and mental energy will quickly add up, so it is worthwhile to consider whether each makes sense for you and your work.)

So now let’s talk about rejection. After dinner last night when I checked my e-mail, I was staring in the face of three brand new rejections that all came in within the previous few hours. No matter what you might have won in the past or your own evaluation of your own work, a string of rejections is not conducive to warm fuzzy feelings about yourself. Most of us will inevitably start questioning ourselves, even if just fleetingly: Maybe my work just isn’t that good?

Well, who can be objective about their own work? For the purposes of this discussion, however, let’s assume that your work is good. And yet we still get rejected, time and time again. There are many legitimate reasons why any selected work will be rejected by a particular juror. First, most of these competitions are incredibly competitive – many have 1o’s or 100′s vying for each spot. Second, art is subjective. Perhaps the juror just didn’t like your work — well, there are always people who don’t like any piece of work. Maybe your work is more traditional and they were looking for something edgier, maybe your work is edgy and they wanted traditional. Maybe the juror was selecting works to curate a unique vision and, while they loved your work, it just didn’t fit it. For all these reasons and more, as artists we need to learn (and, believe me, it is hard sometimes) to not take it personally.

My lesson from all of this for my work is to embrace the rejections and recognize that they are just part of the process. Instead of being annoyed at each one like I used to be, I have now slowly come to realize that they really are subjective. And while I certainly prefer to get an acceptance rather than a rejection, getting a rejection means that I’m out there in the ring and trying to present my work to the world. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, but how great is the ability to present your work that way? Now when I get those inevitable rejections, I know that I’m putting my work out there, trying for more and more competitive shows, and if I don’t get in — well, there is always next year.

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Posted in For Photographers, The Business of Photography | Comments closed

Photography Shows in and near Maine – February 2012

By admin | Published: February 1, 2012

"Wolf Moon III", Copyright Jim Nickelson

I’ve decided to start keeping a monthly list of photography shows throughout Maine to be published near the first of each month. I will do my best to be exhaustive, but please feel free to chime in with any comments or to email me with shows you’d like me to include – I’m sure I missed some of them that are out there. I’ll include any shows that I can find that include photography as part of the show.

I collect this sort of information for myself as I try to make it to as many shows around the state as I can, though obviously life and work and distance all play a role in what I can actually see in person.

Without further ado, here is what I’ve found so far for February:

Aarhus Gallery, the exhibition entitled “Blue” (inc. photographer Terry Hire, among many other artists). The show runs Feb. 2nd-26th with an opening reception Feb. 3rd from 5-8 pm.

Addison Wooley Gallery in Portland has their second consecutive Bruce Brown-curated show with two Portland photographers, Caleb Charland and Peter Gruner Shellenberger, and entitled “Artifacts and Particles”. The show runs Feb. 2nd – 26th with an opening reception this coming Thursday 5-8pm as well as the First Friday. Review here.

The new Old Salts Gallery in Camden has its February show with a variety of artists, including one photographer (Shelagh Delphyne), opening this Saturday from 5-8 pm. The exhibit, which you can read about in this press release, continues until Feb. 29th.

UMMA’s current exhibition includes Lori Nix’s The City project and is up until March 24th in Bangor.

The Portland Museum of Art has two photography exhibitions this month, “Making Faces: Photographic Portraits of Actors and Artists” that is up until April 8th and Tanja Hollander’s new exhibition entitled “Are You Really My Friend?” that opens February 4th and runs until June 17th. Ed Beem has a short review of Hollander’s exhibition here and Bob Keyes has one here.

Fryeburg Academy, Pace Galleries of Art, “Singular” show, runs until March 19th. There are 10 photographers in this show, which is curated by Heather Frederick of VoxPhotographs. You can read the press release here.

The Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, New Hampshire (which I admit I had never heard of – thanks to Ed Beem of Yankee Magazine for the heads-up) has what looks to be great show of modernist photography (“A New Vision: Modernist Photography”) that opens February 4th and runs until May 13th.

EDIT: I just noticed another non-Maine but must-see show at the MFA in Boston – “Silver, Salt, and Sunlight: Early Photographs in Britain and France”, opening February 7th and running until August 19th, 2012. You can still catch their Modernist Photography exhibit until April 1st, too, which is very good.

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Posted in Client Shows, Maine Photography Shows | Comments closed

Calls for Entries February 2012

By admin | Published: January 30, 2012

Here are some of the upcoming exhibition opportunities or calls for entry for photographers, particularly those in Maine and New England. This list is certainly not exhaustive and reflects ones (usually) of particular interest to me. Two new big ones (CMCA and PRC) and two with entries in the next few days, so move fast if you’d like to enter those.

As always, please let me know in the comments if you have any other suggestions for this list!

The now 7th Annual Maine Photography Show is accepting entries with all entries due by February 1st. This is always a fun one to enter and to see what gets in.

Eyephoneography #3 – Open call for entries (and no entry fees), entries due February 3rd. As you might guess, this is for the iPhone crowd. You know who you are.

Vermont PhotoPlace Gallery’s has entries due February 6th for a  show entitled “In Your Dreams”.

Aarhus Gallery in Belfast has their now annual call for art for their “44N 69W: Radius Belfast” 2012 show, open to artists of all sorts living within 30 miles of Belfast. The way this works is that you bring 1-3 pieces, make a small donation that they then pass to local food kitchens, and proceeds of any sales are also passed to local food kitchens. It is always a fun and diverse show and for a great cause. Drop-off is between Feb. 23rd and Feb. 26, so please checkout their website for details.

The Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockport has a call for entries for their 2012 Biennial with entries due March 1st. Please note also that entries are physical proof-type prints that must be delivered by that date – it is not an online entry. The Biennial will be co-curated by CMCA director Suzette McAvoy and independent curator Daphne Anderson Deeds. This is obviously one of the big shows this year in Maine and well worth entering.

The PRC in Boston is having their prestigious 17th Annual Juried Exhibition, entitled “Exposure 2012″, with entries due between February 1 and March 2nd. The juror is Alison Nordström, Curator of Photographs and Director of Exhibitions at the George Eastman House. This is one I definitely recommend that all New England photographers consider.

The international contest entitled “The Art of Photography Show” in San Diego has entries due June 30th, but early entry discounts are available until February 14th.

Good luck!

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Maine Photographer Update

By admin | Published: January 26, 2012

There seem to be a lot of shows going on right now for Maine photographers, so I thought I’d highlight a few. First, this weekend a few shows close down (I’m going to go see these two in Portland on Saturday myself) so if you are interested, move quickly – these shows include the Bruce Brown-curated shows at the Addison Wooley Gallery and at the Lewis Gallery at the Portland Public Library.

Copyright Felice Boucher

Congratulations to Mainers ( and Nickelson Editions clients) Felice Boucher, Sarah Szwajkos, and Robert Moran (with a slick new website!) for being accepted into the Poetic Objects show at the Vermont PhotoPlace Gallery.

The Singular show I talked about way back when is moving to the Pace Galleries of Art on the campus of Fryeburg Academy in Fryeburg, Maine, with an opening reception this Saturday. It is a very interesting show and definitely worthwhile – I haven’t seen that gallery yet myself but have heard it is gorgeous.

Congratulations to NE client Terry Hire for being a participating artist in the upcoming “Blue” show at Aarhus Gallery in Belfast, Maine, which runs from February 2nd through the 26th with an opening reception Friday February 3rd, 5-8pm.

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