I thought our lovely Jen Bekman had tipped the top of the chain letter hype and put all this meme-ness to rest. Then I saw that Hot Shot Shen Wei tagged me. While I was planning on ignoring it, I do usually try to talk about you rather than myself, so perhaps a proper introduction is in order. I'll take this as an opportunity to let you in on how and why exactly I'm the one bringing you such fascinating daily posts. Here we go: 5 things about your Hey, Hot Shot! Guide you probably didn't know.

1. My roots : still a southern belle at heart
I was born and bred in the Delta, or Memphis if you will—the home of Elvis, rock-n-roll, and I'm banking 96% of readers' favorite photographer. I attended the Hutchison School for Girls where I had ballet, etiquette, and impeccable grammar ingrained into me. I participated in cotillion, but got out right in time to avoid my debutante years. And while I can perform a rather intricate table setting, I consciously shed my drawl years ago.

2. Pre-digital days : a photographer is born
I used to take disposable cameras to school on almost a daily basis to snap pictures of my classmates (paying extra careful attention to the males I was lusting after). Then I'd have a lucky parent rush me to the nearest drug store for one-hour processing, allowing me to drool over the glossy snapshots all evening long. This was a terribly rewarding habit of mine for many, many years; in fact, I would venture to say one I still haven't quite shaken.

3. The quintessential teenage girl + her camera
On any given night between the age of 15 and my high school graduation, I could be found in a small steamy shed in my backyard in Arizona, standing in front of my enlarger with a bag of ice and a fan behind my back. Here I printed hundreds of black and white images (many a macro) of eyes, nudes, dead birds, anything mildly gooey or disgusting, and, of course, my feet. [Not exactly a surprising fact, but just thought I'd verify it for you.]

4. Paying my dues and barely a penny to show
It began with a summer under Leslie Calmes in the research department at The Center for Creative Photography in Tucson where I spent hours trying to make sense of John Gutmann's archives. I went on to intern for a photographer of many trades in New York—Gigi Stoll. A bit later, I found myself assistant to everyone's favorite Chicagrapher, Brian Ulrich. I had a brief interlude with Chelsea, only to realize running errands was not my cup of tea—which led me to the fabulous Jen Bekman, where you find me now.

5. Going on 4 years, the complex has set in.
A student after my BFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I have spent an entire undergraduate career fixated on my stature. And it all started with a documentary on the human growth hormone which I dubbed The Last of a Dying Breed: ten action packed minutes of statistics, Randy Newman, and a brief shot of me secretly standing next to Steven Tyler.

Although I continue to have my curiosity humored as I watch this spread, I'll follow suit and try to wrap it up. I'll spare some lucky 5 the tags and instead prod some confidential meme-ness from our Ultras, whose show is up through March 3 and who will also be reviewing your submissions.

But for the sake of reading pleasure, here are three from the family just in case you missed them: Jen Bekman, Joerg Colberg, and Shen Wei

Pony Bride by Debra Tomaszewski

Debra Tomaszewski's interest in photography grew out of a degree in art education and the weekly task of running a middle school photography club. Inspired by the "metaphors and life lessons" of youth, she began photographing children and has been doing so ever since.

In Growing Up Girl, I examine universal themes of childhood as viewed through the female lens. These photographs are poetic metaphors for everyday moments. This series captures the confusing emotions and developing sexual/social identities of girls as they come of age and glimpse into their inner lives.

A well-traversed subject, she walks it well. Her series is complete with 33 images many of which are worth a look.

Use the weekend wisely. Enter.

Last minute but not least, Anthony LaSala, Senior Editor for PDN and now Hey, Hot Shot! Panelist, has joined our ranks and right in time for the winter review! Anthony is a guiding light for photographers young and old, amateurs and the experienced alike. Already a friend and patron to the emerging photographer, he has helped to bring us PDN's 30—their choice of the top 30 emerging photographer's to keep your eye on. As the newest member of team Hey, Hot Shot!, he'll help this beyond believable group select 2007's initial round of Hot Shots. Yes, today spirits are high. Welcome Anthony!

Since 1997, Anthony LaSala has been part of the editorial staff at the award-winning, monthly magazine for professional photographers, Photo District News. Now a Senior Editor for PDN, he writes and oversees several columns for the publication, and has helped make the international magazine the "bible" of the photography industry. A nominee for Photography Editor of the Year at the 2003 and 2004 International Photography Awards, he has also been a regular contributor to a number of national magazines, guest curator for numerous gallery exhibitions in the New York City area, and a panelist for several annual contests. He is the author of the forthcoming The Brooklynites (powerHouse, 2007) and World's Top Photographers: Nudes (Rotovision, 2005). He currently lives in his hometown of Brooklyn, New York.

I've said it before and will say it again, this all-star team keeps getting better and better. If you need a reminder of exactly who will be looking at your submissions, take a look at the panelist page [or see their sweet smiling faces on the blog].

Astronaut by Jim Turbert

Aspiring Hot Shot Jim Turbert is another case where it's best to just let him say it. From Jim's statement:

When there is a new child in a family, people tend to be happy and optimistic. They have high hopes because a baby is a blank slate, and theoretically anything is possible. If the child turns out to be clever, the hopes and expectations get even higher. I can recall my mother telling me that she thought I was going to be an astronaut when I grew up. Little did she know that only around 450 out of the 6.5 billion people on earth have been to outer space. One would need to be extraordinary to make the cut to be on that team. I am not extraordinary. The least ordinary thing about me is that I make self-portraits. The most recent batch is about expectations that my family and friends had for me as a youngster versus the reality of what I have become as a grown up.

On that note, keep it up Jim. As for everyone else, show us what you've got...enter today.

Carrot Cake House by Erin Gleeson

Aspiring Hot Shot Erin Gleeson grew up on an apple orchard where she aspired to follow family tradition and study the tricky art of the kitchen. But rather than heading off to culinary school, she found herself mastering photography in the big apple itself. And guess what she's doing now, photographing food of course. Starting off with a more traditional method for depicting some of our most dangerous temptations, she's recently decided to complicate matters for us...

On the glossy pages of magazines and ads we are trained to desire certain things that look a certain way. I decided to play with the advertising aesthetic by inserting pages from magazines as backdrops for my food—in a way placing them into desirable situations in order to tempt the viewer. In this way I question what it is that we are supposed to desire, supposed to want and supposed to have.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday @ 2pm ... deadline!
That leaves you 4.5 days...enter soon or even: right now.

200+ New Housing development in Apodaca, 2006 by Alejandro Cartagena

Initially picking up a camera to both help him understand his surroundings and offer him moments of solace during crazy times, aspiring Hot Shot Alejandro Cartagena is interested in self representation through the outside subject. As of late, he's hunting for identity in familiar spaces. From his statement:

I returned to my home country (Dominican Republic) and did a conscious register of habitable spaces which I needed to redefine and make mine again. My actual work New Topographies from Northeastern Mexico is my way of understanding both the spaces where I finished growing up and the people with which I live. I capture the strange metamorphosis of landscapes waiting for the arrival of urban life and the lack of urban planning. Thousands of repetitive model homes that could be part of an uncanny TV show about who can make their homes the most original in the shortest time. Finally I look for how these new urban signs blend in with the natural landscape and see in this the signs of my adoptive culture.

The clock ticks; you're on deadline. Enter today.

Count your lucky stars, for today we are feeling generous @ the jb. You've asked and we willingly oblige, the deadline for the Winter 2007 Edition of the Hey, Hot Shot! competition has officially been extended one additional week. You now have through next Monday at 2pm s-h-a-r-p to strut your stuff and get it in.

New deadline: Monday February 12 @ 2PM
Winners Announced: Monday February 19 @ 12PM
HHS! Winter Showcase Opening: Wednesday March 7, 2007, 6-8PM

Be a winter winner and enter today!

Green Car by Joshua Smith

Joshua Smith hails from Springfield, Missouri and comes to Hey, Hot Shot! via the formidable, estimable and most awesome Mary Virginia Swanson.* Says Joshua:

The act of photographing brings the immediate world back to me, where I scrutinize from the distance I choose. Moving closer I find that the change in proximity offers fewer solutions than the scene at large. In creating these photographs the immediate world is returned to me, and I begin to reconcile the beauty and melancholy of our collective experience.

The end is near, for this season at least, and the panelists are gearing up for the Winter 07 review. It's not too late... why not enter today?

*MVS's Marketing Guidebook for Photographers is an excellent resource for the emerging photographer, and she's just released an updated edition. Check it out.

Halo by aspiring Hot Shot Logan Kleier

I am often asked if we here at the jb are opposed to certain types of photography, most recently, abstract photography. It's true that when browsing through the artists on the site or the submissions shown on the blog, you will run into very little "abstract" work. While we pride ourselves for the variety in work and artists we showcase, we don't have genre quotas to fill. We won't lie, we each have our own preferences, but the panel is extensive, as are our preferences. When it comes down to it we like work that is good—good work comes in many forms. And I have said, and will say again, the selection I show here is my attempt to summarize the work you're sending our way. So for those of you after something abstract, I hunted down a recent submission by Logan Kleier which caught my eye.

I use color and light as tools to create abstractions of ordinary objects. The resulting images evoke an appreciation of elemental beauty and joy. I also use these images to explore the personal emotional value we attach to colors and light that surround us on a daily basis.

Beautiful indeed, I am drawn to Logan's image for its similarity to my personal fixations at the moment. I recently enrolled in a braincrashing course if there ever was one, the Search for Life in the Universe. My late night surfing sessions have been filled with stardust and extraterrestrial beings squished between long pauses of contemplation and perplexity. For the weekend I pass along some inspiration in the form of UFOs, the cosmos, and the good ol' Comet Sample Return Mission.

In between your new found obsessions and the standard weekend fun, we have reached the homestretch, get those entries in! As for Alice, I'm headed south for a few days, but leave you in good hands.

Enter today!

Hudson River Watch, New York, NY, 2006 by Robert Vizzini

What can I say, I miss New York and can't wait to get back...

Born and bred New Yorker and aspiring Hot Shot Robert Vizzini on his submission:

New York has always been a place of change, and lately it seems to be increasingly and rapidly shifting, reshaping, and vanishing. Along with this, I personally have experienced the feeling that time is precious. Beginning about two and a half years ago, all the incidental work of doing photography weighed on me to the point where I stopped taking photographs. What I found, though, was that the images of New York continued to impress themselves on my imagination. I recently decided I had to get back to capturing them again on film.

For a long time, I have wanted to do a large-scale project on New York, my hometown. I have a sense of urgency, though, both with my feelings of getting older and with the rapidity of the changes in the city. Lately, I have been photographing feverishly, night after night, finding new aspects of the landscape to capture at every turn.

Less than one week remains to get your entries in! How about entering today?

Blue Moon Diner by Shane Lavalette

I cannot recall each of the exact places where I have run into Hot Shot hopeful Shane Lavalette around the web, so let's just say he gets around. At the ripe age of 19, he not only has a great name and considerable Google results, but an impressively cohesive body of work which you can see on his website or on his flickr stream. On his submission:

These images are a small selection from a larger on-going body of work currently titled Je Reviens (meaning "I Return" as well as "I Haunt"). The project, stemming from personal experience, explores my own attempt to find home, relationships with the landscape as well as domestic space, and a continued search for this sense of comfort, where worldly cares fade and the people and places that one loves become the focus.

Keep it up Shane. Everyone else, the clock ticks...

Enter here!

The Last Splash Made It by Mandy Sue Springer

One of my favorite parts of looking through the submissions is the variety in not just the work, but in the way artists choose to represent themselves through words. The statement can easily become the bane of any artist's existence, a frustrating yet necessary addition to the process. Sometimes they're in first person, sometimes third, short and sweet versus long and sprawling, a heavy handed academic tone or an informal blurb—each submission comes with a surprise. Luckily, there is not a mandatory method for writing about one's work or oneself—it's secondary support and only you can gauge how much is necessary. You know why you make the work you do, but oh how tricky it can be to convince others.

I give you words from aspiring Hot Shot Mandy Sue Springer:

I am from Kentucky. I like overalls and sometimes I don't wear shoes, but I wear makeup and love lace. I have dirt under my fingernails most of the time and I get pedicures. I stay up too late and don't have enough time to take naps. I love the beach and the mountains more. My favorite color is green and trees follow everywhere my art goes. I wonder when I will quit wondering what I will do when I grow up. After receiving a bachelors degree in studio art I realized that I didn't know enough and now I am finding out more at Savannah College of Art and Design. I am best at worrying, but tell others that worrying is useless because it doesn't solve problems. My mom always said I talk too much, but strangers say not enough. And pictures allow me to tell the stories that only I see.

You have a mere week to get your entries in. Surprise us, enter today!

Elk, CA by aspiring Hot Shot John Saponara

The Hey, Hot Shot! contender of the day: John Saponara.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF STRANGERS: I initially began making photographs of tourists photographing themselves in various places as a reaction to them. I wanted these people to be prescient and in the moment, rather than worrying about showing granny and Uncle Bob that they were in Yellowstone. I strove to create a quiet photograph no matter the chaos that surrounded them or me. With time, these images become less about the places in them, but rather a faded memory associated with being there, somewhat recognizable, but belonging to someone else. The places here have become a stage set, separated from reality: they exist only in the world that my photographs have created for them.

Enter today!

Red Popsicle by Robert Thurlow

Something warm and sunny for a cold winter day, I give you aspiring Hot Shot Robert Thurlow.

My photographs express feelings of humor and alienation. My autobiographically themed work uses repetition and narrative to enhance and challenge notions of pop culture and the banality of the everyday and the self.

Yes, the weather might have frozen us out of the gallery, but it is a prime day to submit your work—enter online!

A brief administrative announcement: Cold snap + Heat problem = Uninhabitable gallery!

NYC weather is cold with temps only in the teens for the day and the heating system's gone kaput. Rather than become human icicles, we're closed for the day. We'll resume regular hours tomorrow (Saturday): Noon - 6pm. Please come see us then!

Til then, spend time with the jb virtually:

+ Read up on all the Hot Shots

+ Check out jen bekman artists

+ Visit Jen's blog, Personism

The Sweater Incident, 1999, by contender Jill Frank

Jill Frank's Hey, Hot Shot! submission comes from a series of reenactments of fleeting incidents from her childhood. In caricatures of herself and family, or maybe even me and you, she does a decent job at summing up that feeling of painful reminiscence that we all seem to enjoy so much. Regardless of the nostalgic humiliation, her work is humorous and dare I say poetic, she puts it well. As does her accompanying project illustrating her childhood memories of others which you can see on her website here. Now I suppose I'll pass the mic to her...

My return home, after years of living on my own opened a flood of ideas about the idea of family, the absurdity that we experience when we are close to people, and my own memories of childhood that were almost forgotten. My goal became to record the moments that I felt had shaped my family history.

Jill too left New York and is now in Chicago at The School of the Art Institute, meaning neither of us were in attendance at last night's soiree. But thanks to all who went and helped make it the eventful evening that I hear it was!

Next time, be the guest of honor. Enter today!

Untitled, from the series Workspace by Joseph O. Holmes

Tonight Jen Bekman Gallery presents the second annual Hey, Hot Shot! ne plus ultra, also known as the HHS! 2006 Annual, the creme de la creme of Hot Shots. That's four fantastic artists in one show! We've got Ian Baguskas, Kate Bingaman-Burt, Alison Grippo, and Joseph O. Holmes. Yes, that is quite hot. And the kicker: It's the top of the hill for the JBG, the 40th exhibition!

Come and help us celebrate the big day.

Hey, Hot Shot! ne plus ultra
(2006 Annual)

Ian Baguskas | Kate Bingaman-Burt | Alison Grippo | Joseph O. Holmes

Opening Reception: Wednesday January 24 | 6pm - 8pm
Exhibition Dates: January 24 - March 3, 2007

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring St (between Elizabeth + Bowery)
NYC 10012 | +1.212.219.0166

Untitled (two people under a large tree) by contender Grady O'Connor

Perhaps you recall Grady O'Connor's work from the last round of Hey, Hot Shot! submissions. Today I unknowingly selected his work once again, only upon googling his name did I discover our paths had crossed before. And what a pleasant surprise it was! While still interested in pursuing the simplicity in life, Grady has been working on a new body of work which you can see on his flickr page here. On his submission:

Over the past few months I have been creating a body of work that is representational of my current views of the world around me. I live a life split between my apartment in the East Village, my parents house in the suburbs, and endless points along the way. While I have always had strong ties to home, travel has always been an important factor in my life. As contrived as it is, my travels truly are about the journey; gas stations, parking lots, roadside diners. I carry my camera with me to make documents of these places in the most literal sense. I find joy in the simple things, and have taken these photographs to reflect upon that.

Good work, Grady! Everyone else, less than two weeks remain, get 'em in! Enter online today. And while you're at it, join us tonight for the Hey, Hot Shot! Annual and let the hottest of the Hot Shots from 2006 get you in the mood.

Untitled 2 by Mark Diehl

Contender Mark Diehl submitted work from his Dream Series. Well-executed and, more importantly, well-edited night photography summing up the work, I must give him credit for his take on the process. He says, "I attempted, constantly, to grasp why I was so enthralled with sacrificing rest for photographing silently at the hours when so few are awake." Shooting in his hometown, he revisits his past haunts, the places he knew only as a child, taking the project beyond eerie light and long exposures into a personal jaunt with nostalgia.

To photograph at night, to suffice for sleep, is to equate this process to dreaming. Fittingly and surprisingly, I found myself with physical records of places I dreamt of wandering in night as a youngster. These photographs are a document of discovery for myself, both as the artist and what it meant as a child to transverse into the dreaming landscape.

You have two weeks to get your entries in. Why not enter today?

Untitled, from the series Concubines of New York by Fall 2006 Hot Shot Shen Wei

Fall 2006 Hey, Hot Shot! winner Shen Wei is one of those photographers who not only finds the time to make massive quantities of work that manage to remain cohesive and, well, good, but also is quite the man about town, with impeccable networking skills to boot. Oh,the juggle, he handles it well. Shen was recently awarded a Manhattan Community Arts Fund grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and New York City Department of Cultural Affairs for his documentary project Concubines of New York.

And some older news, Hey, Hot Shot! panelist and celebrity blogger Joerg Colberg named him a Photographer of the Year, along with Amy Elkins and Richard Renaldi. And at the same time our own Jen Bekman was named an Innovator of the Year, Shen received an Honorable Mention for American Photo's Images of the Year.

AND... Shen's work in the Hey, Hot Shot! Showcase received press in two Chinese periodicals, The Sing Tao Daily and The Ming Pao Daily.

A translation from The Sing Tao Daily:

Shen Wei focused most of his work on portraiture, his portraits are sensual and sensitive, fully expressed his idea about body, persona and identity. In this 10 artists photography group show, he showed works from his series Almost Naked, "I like to look at American society from a Chinese perspective".

Oh yes, how impressive our alumni can be! Congratulations Shen.