Shot Up North

We’ve submitted work again this year to Shot up North or SUN. We’ve been fortunate to have had work selected for the final 50 every year since we started submitting, but no guarantees for this year. We think it a good competition and deserves supporting. It is now in its 25th year.

However, submitting work for competitions throws up several problems for us. How can creative work, which is always so subjective, be judged ? Woody Allen never went to the Oscars because he believed very firmly that creative work should not and could not, be judged ( he seems to have changed his mind recently). Judging usually generates artificial standards of grading such as 1st prize or Best in Show that can also be viewed in a very arbitrary way.

But submitting is difficult to resist, especially in an era of PR and getting your name out there. One also feels that if you create good work then it deserves to be seen by as wide an audience as possible and success at awards can do this. We try to view success or failure philosophically !

Anyway, these are our submissions for this year, we’ll see what happens.