Every few months we’re hosting meetings of Toronto photographers to explore new ways to foster understanding and create opportunities.

These “Photographer PunchUps” – a tougue-in-cheek label inspired by the sometimes combative dialogue – led to the creation of a series of articles for photographers and the development of Modelresource Plus+.

December’s PunchUp also involved an evaluation of Modelresource Plus+ and ways to make it a more useful platform for photographers.

Most felt the idea of a strictly-Canadian focused site (Canadian photographers and Canadian models) was a great way to reach their intended audience (Canadian clients).

What would be better still however, would be to give those coveted Canadian clients a stake in what gets posted.

So after a couple months of researching, planning, emailing and coercing, we’re now ready to launch the newest place to showcase the best of what our industry has to offer.

JURIED (juried.tumblr.com) is our new project, and we’re very excited about this new format.

• Content will be hosted on Tumblr, to make use of a growing community that encourages re-blogging and crediting the original source.
• Modelresource will no longer take a role in judging the submissions; instead we’ve assembled a rather impressive little “Jury” of influential clients to do that. (Meet The Jury here)
• Every submission will be passed on The Jury without any information that identifies the team responsible for creating it.
  • To ensure stories are judged on their own merit, not the names behind them.
  • To give photographers a platform to be creative; if The Jury says no, they won’t ever learn who submitted the material they rejected
• Links from Modelresource, our Facebook page and Twitter accounts to increase the exposure of every successful submission.

Continuing what we started with Modelresource Plus+, we will continue to credit those involved as much as possible (links back to websites, blogs, tumblr pages, twitter handles, etc).

You’ll notice some of the content from Modelresource Plus+ has migrated to the new site. When we set up Juried (but long before we told anyone about it) all of the original stories were transferred. Some people found us despite the lack of publicity and based the number of notes and the feedback we got to our inbox, we decided to let several stand.

The most popular story, in case you’re curious, was Ford‘s Alex Lafarciola by Mike Lewis, which had 22 notes before we breathed a word to anyone: juried.tumblr.com/post/15632931238/fords-alex-lafarciola-by-mike-lewis

Our goal with Juried is simply to give Canadian photographers an opportunity to get assessed by the types of clients that could potentially shape their career, while removing the risk associated with leaving an unfavourable impression.

We want to grow the industry in new and increasingly creative directions.

Ideally, we want to see some magic.

If you’re on Tumblr, we really hope you’ll follow along with us at juried.tumblr.com.

Hair & Makeup: Natalie Blouin (Plutino Group)
Stylist: Monika Tatalovic

Digital Retoucher: Robyn Nowoczin (www.robynnow.com)

(@vod19, www.dfoto.ca)

Makeup & Hair:  Jessica LaBlanche (Folio)

@carlocalope (www.carlocalope.com)

(www.mikelewis.ca)

Hair/Makeup: Rachel Elizabeth Smith

Photography Assistant: Adamo dePax

@javierlovera (www.javierlovera.com)