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