In 2016, I left my job to start a company. I still vividly remember an exchange with an older guy shortly thereafter.

OLD GUY
Oh. So you started your own company?

TROY
Yeah. I’m a little nervous but more excited.

OLD GUY
Sure. Fun stuff. Being your own boss is great. Want to know the best thing about having your own company?

TROY
Sure. What ...

in the third year of the everyman, to thank my judges, i decided to host a dinner for them. early on i only had five judges and could fit my entire judging panel (and their spouses) around my dinner table. so marty and i (mostly marty for sure) prepared a scrumptious home style dinner and we had a dinner party.

now, the thing i hadn't considered in all this (as there always has to be that one pesky unseen) was something about how i chose my judges. early on i didn't want any overlap in the interest or approach of my judging panel. thus, i carefully hand-picked people who were distinct from my other judges, the only commonality between them being a genuine love for photography. it wasn't until they all stood in the same room looking at one another that the flaw in my dinner-party math came to light. aside from this joint interest in photography, these people did not share a single interest in common.

i had a school teacher, an accountant, a graphic designer, an IT manager, and a guy who sold 50's toys on ebay for a living. these people sat in the living room where the long silences were broken only by short one-word answers to desperate attempts at conversation. when dinner was served the awkward stillness persisted but just played out in the dining room. when we all sat and dishes were politely passed i frantically—in my mind at least—tried to get something started but as i scanned the room any question asked of one was not of interest to their neighbor. someone actually commented about the weather. this is the point i physically felt the desperation of the moment. i couldn't believe a dinner party hosted by marty and i resorted, minutes into the meal, to a mention of weather. fingers slipping from the last handhold, i flailed for something.

TROY
so, what did folks think about the photo that won landscape?

JUDGE A
oh, i thought it was lovely. such a unique take on an often-shot subject.

JUDGE B
lovely? unique? it was trash. i can't believe it placed let alone won.

JUDGE C
i wouldn't call it trash but i thought it maybe shouldn't have placed as high as it did. the clear winner of the event for me was macro/abstract.

JUDGE B
for me it was black and white.

JUDGE D
finally. something i can agree with.

and here or shortly after here the table broke out into the most vigorous discussion our dining room has ever seen. the din from multiple heated and excited conversations that involved various combinations of people moved about energetically and held through the rest of the evening. i was astonished both at how powerful this one shared experience between these greatly varied people could be and how sad it was i didn't anticipate the potential sooner. i'm a dolt.

since that initial dinner, the everyman 'wrap' party has taken place every year, save one given a puke-illness my kids brought home from school. i've had judges skype from italy and i've had judges drive in from tennessee (where i paid for their lodging at a fancy nearby hotel, thus making them feel like a for-real celebrity). the annual wrap parties stand as one of our yearly highlights and one of my more favorite parts of the everyman.

another semi-related story to the everyman deals in the buildup to the contest. in discussing the early motivation to get art, i mentioned going to an art fair and buying some photos for my newly purchased (and bare) home. during the transaction i struck up a conversation with the photog's wife who also served as his manager. she mentioned the newly forming web and their need to get her husband's work online but confessed they were having problems with it. having recently gotten into the game i gave her my sympathy admitting there was a lot of mystery to in using this new medium well, especially in the arts. but i waved my arm towards their wall of photography and said their task was simpler than most as the biggest thing they had to do was stay out of the way of her husband's amazing photography and let the art wash over the user. she conceded to the sense of the approach but gave the oft-used 'easier said than done' in reply. looking over the man's stunning work hanging on the temporary panels of his booth, various treatments for porting the images to the web came to mind. i asked her if she would be interested in an exchange—a web design for some prints (the prints were quite pricey for a fellow who just bought his first home). i added if they didn't like my suggestions they wouldn't owe anything in return. if they did, i would let them determine the quantity and size of prints they felt fair in exchange. she smilingly agreed.

as is the way with true inspiration in a matter of days i had produced a site design i thought would suit them well. i packaged up several screen shots and emailed them to the woman. as is the case whenever you share your artistic creations i sat back and awaited their reaction. none came. not after a day. not after three days. not after two weeks. i obviously took the silence as a solid rejection of my work and will say it injured my confidence in the craft and vigor for the trade more than i'd like to admit. i tried to push the failure out of my mind but the taunting notion routinely skipped through the forefront of my awareness like a teasing classmate.

then on a bored weekend night months later—i said it maimed me to embarrassing degrees—i pulled up the photog's site to try to see what they could like in their present design that my work did not improve upon. after the page loaded i stared at not the faltering design i had looked to replace, but the design i had sent them, albeit a clumsy implementation of it. i stared at the page using my design for several minutes trying to make sense of what i was seeing. i scrolled to the footer and about pages looking for a mention of credit. i found none.

Anger took the Rejection that had been moping around my brain by the collar and threw her out the front door with a flailing kick in the ass. the few times Recognition's bright face dared to knock on the door to celebrate the acceptance of our design Anger turned her away with a rough push in the shoulder.

i talked to marty about what happened. she told me to call them and say that its a sad world when one creative steals the work of another creative and especially after one supported the other by buying their work. i silently listened to marty's prudent advice but instead said things like, "nah, it doesn't really matter" or "if you have to say those words to an adult they won't matter". so i did nothing. well, that's not entirely true. every month or two i'd pull the website up and look at my design and feel the anxiety of emotions that sputtered and flared.

then the email campaign began. every few months i'd receive an email from this photographer announcing his latest prints and inviting me to see them on his newly designed website. to add to it, they even modeled the email campaign using my design. after the third email, i sent a polite request to be removed from their list and the following email exchanges took place. the two things i learned from this ordeal are:

1. every time i get myself worked up over something, it is almost always for naught in the end.
2. when marty is kind enough to offer advice, i should be sensible enough to use it because it is, also, almost always spot-on counsel.

in honor of the everyman release, i'm devoting the week to everyman related matters (that add to details missed in the everyman story told a few months back). today i'm sharing two of the most noteworthy bits of history:

1. the original photograph
i can put hands on every single image ever entered into the photo contest, but miserably, i have lost the image that began it all—the image from chris mcgrath's coffee table taken of his brother in law taking a giant bite from a plum. the only remnant i have from what i sometimes call "the original entry" that sparked it all is from the 1st everyman where i used the image in the masthead.



2. the kottke explosion
then there was the post heard around the web. every time i the tell the story i obviously mention how simple and unadorned the mention that brought the everyman to the world was. jason kottke's wonderful brevity allows me to repeat it, verbatim, in each re-telling. what that pithy three-word link did for the everyman speaks to the power and potential of the world wide web which can still surprise when we see it flex its muscles in ways we weren't expecting.

i somehow forgot to mention one of my favorite everyman moments. in 2011 i was contacted by a company looking to obtain rights for one of the from the attic entries. i sent the inquiry on to the original entrant and a few months later saw the image used in a chevy add during the 2011 world series. it's the image at the 40 second mark and was the 2008's 3rd place from the attic winner. never before was the mission of the everyman, to get images out there that otherwise weren't out there, ever more succintcly realized. pretty dang neat.



further, i've since found out it caused a bit of a stir as the commercial's creators were accused of lifting the concept from a website. Did Chevy Steal This Commercial Idea From a Popular Blog?. noting they used the everyman image in demostration.

part three

my dining room is collaged with photography from around the world. occasionally a visitor to our home will stroll through this room and exit asking wondrously if the same person took all of those photos. laughingly, we explain the source. i will then add that if a single eye captured that wildly diverse collection of imagery they would be one of the best regarded photographers of our time. sometimes at dinner we play a game where someone will say something like, "how many frogs?" or "how many airplanes" and without looking at the walls everyone at the table has to guess how many pictures containing the noted item are on display. after everyone guesses, a eye-scanning inventory is made. also, a for sure favorite for my kids is to point out all the naked people pictures to visiting kids.

truth is i now have enough photography i could cover virtually every bare space of my home. i've been trying to convince marty to let me do themes throughout the house, like, i'm dying to decopauge the bathroom with photos of bathrooms from around the world, wallpapering every inch of plastered space, including the ceiling with images of toilets and people using toilets (yep, i got 'em). she's held consistently resistant to this design direction over the years. i've promised her that were she to green light collaging the full home, we could be on our city's house tour and be known as 'that picture house'. this surprisingly holds zero appeal for her (i think she imagines the expense of replacing all the broken frames from the kids knocking them off their nails in their rough and tumble way of life). so instead of consuming the entire house, i continue to tweak the display in the dining room, the one room marty has given me full control over, adding more photos each year as well as rotating what is displayed from year to year, pulling new photos from boxes that hold the overflow.

given the laughable overstock of great imagery, around 30,000 images at this time, it has become a near annual tradition to contemplate winding the operation down. i mean is there really going to be a twentieth annual everyman? a thirtieth? each time i walk down this path i of course pull up the site and spin through its pages. this activity sucks me in like it has done to many a web tourist before. i marvel at the range and creativity and vividness of the images. the activity inevitably makes me remember the numerous random compliments i've received in my inbox many of which express their adoration of the everyman and how it is their favorite contest. my all-time favorite email came from a former student who was studying abroad. she said she was sitting in a cabin (somewhere in europe, i can't recall where) talking with other students from around the world. one of them told the group of this great photo contest they loved called the everyman. my student was giddy to share that she not only knew the creator but had seen 'the dining room' that showcased the imagery. and every now and again i recall what was probably the most significant email to ever appear in the everyman inbox. it came from a woman who described an office ritual where she and a group of co-workers gathered around a desk at lunchtime and looked through the entries. she explained that the next image in the gallery would be pulled up and the group would take it in and then make their comments about it, discussing the merits or weaknesses of the image and/or title. she said they protected the pace in which they moved only doing so many each day as to not run out of images for the next day, week, month. this email curiously arrived when i was closer than ever to ending the contest. i was dreading the amount of work and effort i was about to undertake in announcing another year. that one crazily-timed note saved the everyman that year (and thus every subsequent year). speaking of timing, i just received an email yesterday day while crafting this post asking if i ran any more photo contests because they liked this contest better than the others for amatuers they were finding and hoped that i ran or knew of others like it. so between the love of the imagery and the supportive audience, this annual ritual of contemplating ending the everyman becomes a more futile exercise with every passing year which i guess means there probably will be a twentieth and even thirtieth everyman. especially as long as i have viable candidates for the everyman spirit award.

but to be fully honest, the biggest reason to push on is the quiet faith i have that one year marty will break down and let me take over the bathroom.

part two

every day i walked the bare, lifeless walls of my home. and every day i had more samples of curious photography i'd seen casually existing in other people's homes swimming through my brain's art gallery. unfortunately, the moment i decided to announce i was holding a photo contest is not very crisp in my mind. i just remember saying on my personal website that i was holding a photo contest. the contest parameters stated that whoever sent me the best picture, as judged by me and few friends, in the next sixty days would win a hundred dollars. and by entering, you retain ownership of your photo but allow me to hang it up in my home. those few sentences pretty well sum of the extent of the early definition (ref).

the first year received forty-two entries. all coming from people who had eaten dinner in my home. i asked two friends if they would look at the photos and tell me their favorites. together, the three of us juried the entries and picked our favorites. i compiled the results and announced the winners. i sent the number one guy a hundred bucks and hung a dozen pictures up in my dining room.

a year later i received an email from someone asking if i would be holding the photo contest again. it hadn't even occurred to me to do it twice but in thinking on it for three minutes, thought why not and announced the 2nd annual everyman. this time i received 80 entries, almost a perfect doubling of the first year, and most excitingly, a few from folks who i didn't know, from far west as california and as far east as new york.

now this year, i did something that would forever change the everyman. i emailed a guy whose website i read. he occasionally posted photographs, some of which were quite spectacular by my eye and right in the wheelhouse of my modest affair. i didn't hear back from him but hours before the deadline, my inbox chimed with an email from him that contained two entries. i can't verbalize the quiet, fist-pumping thrill this produced in my dark, lonely office (oh internet!).

me and my two pals again evaluated the entries and i announced the results. the fella from new york, one jason kottke, took third place. later that day on his personal website he made a post that said, "Third place, woo!. the 2nd place entry is my favorite." the post included a link to my results page. before this link, my site on the day of the big reveal had 37 visitors. they next day saw more the 1,500. and the day after that more than 3,500. seven days after the link the everyman was on the front page of the usa today, named the site of the day. granted the by line with the honor said, "some crazy guy in st. louis is giving away his own money to collect art for his new home." not exactly how my mother would have written it up. the next year saw 1,200 hundred entries. and the next saw 2,000. this continued for awhile until i received an email from spain asking if they could enter. on that day the everyman went international and the entries continued to climb, peaking at 7,700 entries from 80 countries a few years later.

this volume proved too much work for me and my judges and i had to dial it back a bit. these days, the contest has a 2,000 entry cap which seems to be a happy number for all involved.

part 4. the future

part one

some months after buying my house, i stopped at a friend's place to pick him up. after being let in, he asked me to wait a few moments while he finished getting ready. we talked, loudly between the rooms we were in. during the several minutes we did this, i walked around the living room taking in the books and baubles in the space. after scanning the bookshelves and walls, a snapshot on the coffee table caught my eye. it showed a close-up shot of a guy taking a large bite out of a plum. much of what would usually be captured in such a composition was tightly cropped, removing most of the extraneous details. but the unusual photo possessed a surprising amount of mood and emotion. i envisioned it blown up, fifteen feet tall, thirty feet wide in an urban art gallery framed by a stark expanse of concrete wall, people with wine glasses milling before it, discussing the merits and gestalt of the photo.

TROY
hey. this is a great picture.

CHRIS
what? which one.

TROY
the one on the coffee table.

CHRIS
what?

TROY
the guy eating the plum.

CHRIS
oh. that's a goof. we pulled it from the set to throw it out.

TROY
what?! you're throwing this out?

CHRIS
yes. it was an accident.

TROY
but it's a great shot.

CHRIS
you think so?

TROY
yeah i do.

CHRIS
well, you can have it. like i said we are just going to throw it out.

TROY
really? i can i have it?

this marks the moment the first two neurons joined and with help from complementary neurons sitting in the wings giving it mass is when the everyman truly first came into being. after this chance moment, the act of studying photography anywhere i went, whether properly framed, magneted to the fridge or messily strewn about a desk became an official pastime of mine. in little time i came to realize that great, or interesting at least, photography quietly existed everywhere, but was being seen virtually nowhere.

part 3. the early years

over the years i've been asked a time or two about how the everyman photo contest got started. just about every time i've recounted the tale i've told a highly abbreviated version. now, as it's more than a decade mature and the memories are in peril of being handed their walking papers, i thought i should capture the history as i recall it before my brittle synapses lose the ability to recall it. so, this week, in honor of the 13th public opening of the galleries, i will recount how my 2nd most prized digital creation came into being. the first soil got turned ...

after marty and i moved from our apartment into our house. once settled, my single largest complaint about home ownership did not deal in lawn-care, failed wiring, or leaky faucets but with empty walls. the apartment we had just left had a ridiculous number of windows with essentially three of the four walls consisting of nothing but window after window, the only plastered wall in the 1920's structure being the one running down the middle of the building separating the side by side apartments. so after years of a windowed apartment, the unexpected sprawl of bland, soulless walls made our first home not warm and inviting as i'd hoped for but sad and bleak. when i asked marty about it, she gazed about as if seeing it for the first time and confessed she hadn't noticed, not one bit. at the time, i still possessed enough youthful marital optimism that i thought by simply raising the point i planted a seed of discontent in my wife but the green stalk never broke ground. even today, marty could care less if our walls and halls were as stark as they were in our first twenty four hours of possession. i reckon this adds to why marriage will always hold an element of unpredictability.

as you'd expect, just as my zeal did not move her, her lack of interest did not sway me from my vision (e.g. marital deadlock) so when i saw the flyer for an art fair in a nearby huey-huey suburb, i pitched it to marty as a way to get out on a nice day. after walking the tents on blocked-off streets, i brought marty back to my favorite display and began talking up the work. with her prior zeal she said the photos were 'nice'. sensing no love-affair on the horizon i told her i thought we should get a couple images for the house. being an understanding partner, she agreed. so i procured two large images for a startling sum of five hundred dollars and left feeling like i was about to repair the struggling mood of my house forever.

moments after walking through the door i set to finding the perfect spot for my grandiose exhibit. i found it and immediately moved to the framing and hanging and when complete stood back and took it in. the wall was spectacular, alive even. but as i turned and surveyed the surrounding space, which is another way of saying 'the rest of the house', the message stood every bit as bleak as before my renovation. as i walked the rooms and hallways and contemplated how much i just spent to cover the one little nook, and did the quick math of what it would take to cover all the other little nooks, the reality of my bland and boring house set in. unhealthy as the confession sounds, i found the situation surprisingly unsettling.

part 2. conception

last week (friday, saturday, sunday respectively) i hit three meaningful milestones i've been working towards; one professional, one personal, and one family related.

professionally, a project i've been giving effort to for the past year (not exclusively) went live for our collaborators. for those who create you know what sharing something you've invested that heavily in means. for those who aren't in a creating-sort of occupation, you could liken it to taking a naked picture of yourself standing in front of a full length mirror, posting it on the internet, and asking what folks think.

personally, the everyman matured once again. this year proved particularly poignant as over the past few years i lost my focus to the professional version of the contest. while i funneled my energies that way things slipped a bit with the original jewel. when i stopped the ride long enough to look around i became truly dour. the low point was last year's competition with barely 500 entries. then i had to cancel the wrap party days before because of a lice scare. such dumb luck would usually sadden me but given the nose dive the contest took, it proved to be the most merciful action through the long, embarrassing, public decline. but that reflection brought me to mothball the pro contest, swing all the guns back to the original everyman. this year saw more than 1800 entries from over seventy countries roll in. and they were wonderfully varied and rich—what i love most about the everyman. in reviewing the winners, i can say i'm predominately thrilled with the results (i'm especially smitten with the winners of the spirit award).

and lastly, the family success, we have broken bones on our home's floor plan once again and have everyone shuffled into their new rooms. since before the birth of my first child i had visions of building each of my children a loft bed slash desk. not from a store. not from a plan. just from a bunch of thought and observation. barring a custom cut piece of glass for the desktop, the final deck screw got seated, flush might i add, on bella's desk last weekend and she began settling into her new space. more on these room transitions soon.

part of my process involves a fallow mental and productivity period after large bursts of creativity or making. while i've earned and need a brief respite, my problem is i'm just as excited at my next endeavors (on all fronts) so fear my mental lull is already under fire by vibrating neurons and fanciful visions of what can be. the classic "good problem" to have.

may i direct your attention this way where this year's everyman winners have been named. may you enjoy the vivid distraction.

back in august i was contacted by an agency who licenses photos for commercials and film projects. the woman in the email asked if i would put her in contact with a past everyman winner as they would like to use her image in a chevy commercial. as i occasionally get these sorts of emails for everyman entrants, i thanked the woman for the inquiry and passed her info on to the entrant. i never heard anything back from either party and assumed my email for the entrant was dated. then last night while watching game six of the world series (amazing!!!), i saw a chevy commercial and in it i saw the photo i was asked about. few things could have made that game more enjoyable, but that surely rates.

the original photo, a third place from the attic winner back in 08.

and the commercial it was used in (photo is at the 40 second mark).

it's one of those few times a year the everyman sees some motion. this time it's the reveal of the winners on the professional contest.

today also rings the starting bell for the 2011 amateur contest so if you've been thinking of getting in the mix, now is the time.

and i'm thrilled to announce the return of the from the attic category. it may not get the most entries, but it almost always has some of the best.

you may start the walking tour here

the happening place to be today is over the everyman way where the entrants to the 3rd annual everyman pro have been released.

this is not a year to envy being an everyman judge. that lot of folks have their work cut out for them this round.

the 2nd annual everyman pro galleries opened today.

the everyman pro deadline has been extended by two weeks. if you or anyone you know are thinking of entering, hop to it.

for what it's worth, at the time of this writing, there are currently 28 entrants who have submitted 71 photos. i've begun displaying these metrics on the everyman site. they will continue to be updated as things develop. for those that are as awesome at math as i am, this means 28 people are competing for $3,000 dollars in prize money. and there is no limit to how much one person can win. there's not many even-thinking places that are going to give you those kinds of odds. not many at all.

in the event you don't follow such things, the everyman pro is under way and accepting submissions.

and for those who didn't keep score last year, it was anyone's game. especially the macro/abstract category.

so don't play at your own risk. but if you choose to, details may be seen here.