I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve been working on other things; namely doing a big clean up and getting my books ready for my accountant. They are both things that need to be done, but I would much rather be taking pictures or editing, than doing either.

I love competing in photography competitions and being a member of The Professional Photographers of Canada allows me to do that at a high level. Competitions force me to closely examine my images and perfect them. It is a time-consuming task that involves finding the best of the best in my images and then editing them to perfection. It’s a chance to be introspective and analyze my work and make decisions on what I will do differently in the future.

Photo competitions are  not for the faint of heart. When you put your heart and soul into an image and then have it criticized or ignored, you can come away with a bruised ego. But it is a learning process and the learning is what counts. Bruised egos heal and the feedback that you get from entering is worth it.

This was my second year of entering in the Professional Photographers of Canada National Salon. Entrants to the Salon are allowed 4 images and they are scored by a panel of 5 judges. The scores are: Excellent, Merit, Accepted and not Accepted. Last year I only had one image that was accepted. This year I received a Merit, had 2 accepted, and one was not accepted. Of course, I would have loved to have had 4 Excellent scores, (which nobody actually attains) and will continue to strive for that, but I am happy that I did better than the year before.

Here are my winning images:

The Face in the Tatters won a Merit provincially in Sask and it got an Accepted Nationally.

Autumn Palette au Metal won all kinds of awards provincially. Nationally, it got accepted. Just goes to show that you never can tell how an image will do!

The Tree of Divination won a Merit Nationally.

You will notice that none of these are portraits, which is mainly what my business is about. I love doing portrait photography, but I  also enjoy fine art photography and playing with images. It expands my horizons and my thinking and that is all good!

Christina