Each year in the spring, Stivers School for the Arts in Dayton Ohio has an annual fund raising auction to support the photography department. Students at the school exhibit their work at the auction, plus a group of professional fine art photographers from around the world are invited to donate work for the auction. That is how I came to be involved. This was my first year.
The evening begins with a silent auction. When you register you are given a card with your bidding number. You go around the room and write down your bidding number and your bid for the photos you want to buy. As the evening goes on the silent bids go up. Some photo get a few bids and some get a lot.
The walls were filled with dozens of images. You had to look up to see the images on the top rows.
Like any first class art exhibit and auction, there were young people going around helping out and serving refreshments.
People were discussing their favorite photos and making plans for the verbal auction that follows the silent auction. Savvy bidders made notes on the photos that wanted to bid on.
The moment finally arrived. Select images were pulled off the wall (usually the ones with the most and/or the highest bids from the silent part of the auction). The highest silent bid was announced and the verbal auction began.
It was exciting. Even if you had the highest bid in the silent auction, you could still lose the photograph if you didn’t outbid everyone else in the verbal auction. I had a great time and took a lot of photos (see the gallery link below). If you love photography, I bet you would too. If you live around Dayton, the auction is usually the first Friday in April. You can check the Stivers site (link below) to be sure.
Early in the silent auction before the crowds arrived. This 180 degree panoramic image is eleven iPhone photos stitched together with the Autostitch App. Anyone who moved between photos is ghosted. Click to see a large version.
Links
A gallery of photos of the evening
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