Portfolio reviews

Helphoto 2020 is featuring Portfolio Reviews in the festival’s program from August 28-29, 2020. The event will be held at Ateljee in Kansallismuseo / The National Museum of Finland or digitally, in case COVID-19 travel restrictions will prevent some of the jurors or participants from attending in person.
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Portfolio Reviews are paid sessions with some leading experts in the field of photography including curators, festival directors as well as magazine editors and photo-book publishers.⁣
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Portfolio Reviews are open to photographers of all levels to showcase their work and to get back professional feedback as well as networking with people who may be able to help you with your career development or lead to exhibitions, publications and much more. Opportunities for critique, guidance, and professional connection are available within a wide range of photographic markets, such as portrait, product, fine art, travel or fashion photography, among many others.⁣
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What Winners Receive
The first prize winner of this year’s Portfolio Review will be exhibited solo at Helsinki Photo Festival 2021. The winner and up to three runners up will be also featured in the festival’s online gallery on helsinkiphotofestival.com. The winning portfolio and a few selected images of up to three runners up will be promoted on Helsinki Photo Festival’s social media channels, Facebook and Instagram, which can reach up to 5000 virtual followers alone. The highest voted portfolios may be also offered the opportunity to participate in the Helsinki Photo Festival limited edition print program in 2021. The winners will be announced online as well as contacted in person via given email by August 29, 2020.

The Competition Criteria

When examining entries, the jury of reviewers will consider the following criteria:

– Impact
– The lighting
– The story it tells
– Consistency
– It’s technical quality
– Creativity
– Composition
– Use of colour
– Presentation
– Innovative/unique approach to the subject matter

How to enter the contest
1 submitted project equals → one review
2 submitted projects equal → two reviews
3 submitted projects equal → three reviews
4 submitted projects equal → four reviews
If 5 projects are submitted the selected reviewer slots are guaranteed.

The selection process will be in two stages:

The selection process will be organized as follows:
Applications through Picter until August 23rd, 2020. The total number of submissions is limited to 60, participants are selected on a ‘first applied – first served’ basis. All participants are invited to Helsinki for face-to-face meetings with reviewers. Those who will not be able to travel, will have a chance for a video conference. The criteria for the assessment will be originality, coherence and conceptual quality of the projects. The participants can choose the preferred reviewers for their projects, however, the organizers can assign other reviewers for submissions with less than 5 paid reviews. Only the submissions with 5+ paid reviews are guaranteed to get the reviews with selected critics.

All participants have to pay 35€ fee for each project, i.e. review when they do the submission of their project. Each project can contain a maximum of 15 pictures. The face-to-face meetings with experts (reviews) will be organized in Helsinki on August 29-30th, each review will be 20 minutes. Only the participants finalists who paid for 5+ reviews will get reviews with their selected preferred critics, and for submissions with less than 5 paid reviews the organizers will assign a critic based on availability.

Selection of the Winner: During the portfolio review sessions, each critic will select the best portfolio in his opinion. In a final meeting the critics team will choose the best 5 finalists portfolios, 1 winner and 4 follow up finalists. The winner and finalists will be announced during the weekend, August 29th, 2020.

Info about contest and link to sign up: https://tinyurl.com/y4cyk6x5

About Us:
Helsinki Photo Festival is a non-profit association and a cultural event happening in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, pushing the boundaries of how one explores and experiences photography by giving the audience an opportunity to view the work in the public sphere. The festival program includes exhibitions, artist talks, workshops, seminars, portfolio reviews and photo walks.

https://helsinkiphotofestival.com/