Exchanges?

[NicoleScraps]

Have you all ever done a print exchange either here or in another photography community? I don't know what made me think of this in terms of photos, but I have done tons of exchanges in other hobby communities and they are always super fun. Mostly I have done Artist Trading Cards exchanges.But I have done inchie exchanges, recipe card exchanges, as well as a few others.
How it works is one person is the host. You set the rules (for example: a 4x6land/cityscape print representation of the area that you live in with your name and location watermarked descretely on the front). You set a due date and a maximum number of participants. Everyone mails to the host with a self addressed mailer with return postage. The hosts sorts and mails it back to everyone. Then say you have 50 participants, every one of those 50 people gets a package with 50 different prints (49 from others and one of yours back)
I really think would be a fun thing to do with photos. Would anybody be interested in this? I would be glad to host. Or do know of a place where something like this is already going on? We have small kids and we rarely travel outside of our region. I think it would be super fun to have photos from all over the country or even all over the world. Once you get your package back, you could frame them all, or put them in an album. We could do landscape, or abstract, or still life or self portraits. Lots of fun themes.
I don't know. Maybe this is not something that would work in the photography communities. Any thoughts?

[tuxcomputers]

So you would print 50 copies of 1 photo? That would be a sizeable package.. although getting 50 photos from all over the place would be pretty cool.

[TheDarkReaver]

It would be cheaper/easier/quicker/more open to an international base if it was all done electronically.

The people send a picture to the host by e-mail and then the host has to sort it all out and send them on. The images can come with a license for 1 print per person and people can print what they want out of the lot.

I know it's not as exciting as getting stuff through the post, but it is a lot more practical.

Either that or instead of doing 50 of everything, just send 1 and you get a random 1 back.

[Nicole]

I've participated in a photo trade in a group on Flickr.

The way that one was run was that a person offered up 5 photos. They got to pick the sizes (but the standard was a 5x7, nothing too big, but not tiny either). Then they could pick the shots they wanted people to choose from or they could open it up to their entire flickr stream or they could open it up to a set from their flickr stream. Or they could simply send you a photo at random. That was up to the person. Anyone who wanted could claim a photo by posting in the thread, and the person updated their list in their offering post to let everyone know if a spot had been claimed.

The benefit in using 5 photos is that you don't get a huge number of photos that you're not going to do something with. Also the costs at that number aren't too outrageous. Also doesn't require quite as much organisation as creating "print packages"