Thursday greetings, collectors! It might be a bit of surprise to have me pop up in your inbox like this, but I'd be remiss if I didn't share with you the excitement brewing in other provinces of JBP-land. In honor of the day's goings-on, we're featuring editions from a few of our favorite photographers, all of whom happen to be Hot Shots.

As you all know, the photographers that we meet via Hey, Hot Shot! are an important part of our family — they exhibit at the gallery, they've released lots of amazing editions right here on 20x200 and several of them have become dear friends and coworkers. Did you know that Youngna and Raul are both Hot Shots? I think that's pretty cool!

It's not just the photographers of Hey, Hot Shot! that make it great — the panelists are mighty special as well. They're all distinguished in their fields, of course, but what's most impressive to me is their commitment to evaluating all the great work that gets submitted to the competition. And evaluate they did, as did Sara and I, into the wee hours of last night, all in preparation for today's announcement of the first round of Hot Shots for 2009. Please join me in congratulating them!

Michelle Arcila
Daniel Cheek
Mike Sinclair
Parsley Steinweiss
Kurt Tong

Now that they've received the news, they'll be prepping for a group show at the gallery that's slated to open in September and planning editions for 20x200 as well. I'm looking forward to working with them all and I'm especially excited about releasing editions by them.

As we've been working on revising how people browse prints on the site, we've spent a lot of time thinking about how to categorize what we have available. The Hot Shot category is probably one of my favorites; it's incredible to see all those images on a single page — we've met a lot of amazing, talented people via Hey, Hot Shot! You should take some time to get to know them — and their work — too. Have a look at the blog post Sara and Kika just put together which features all the Hot Shots who've done 20x200 editions, and of course if you haven't added the Hey, Hot Shot! blog to your feed reader, there's no time like the present!