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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
Last night was the Annual Banquet for the Manitoba Camera Club. We had a lovely meal catered by Ludwig’s Catering from Bird’s Hill. As part of the banquet we always announce the winners and trophies are given out. I was the lucky recipient of 2 trophies. The first one was for this print in the monochrome category. There is a bit of a story that goes with this print. It was taken on a hill side in Calgary during a recent visit. My son, Andrew runs on the trails in this area and had come across this spot with 2 abandoned cars. The 4 of us, Andrew, his wife and son and myself, went on a hike to get to the spot and it was truly amazing to see 2 abandoned, rusted out old cars in the water, in the middle of nowhere. I would love to know the story of how the cars got there in the first place. One can only imagine. No roads and they ended up in the water. I hope the occupants were alright after this apparent off roading.
This is quite an impressive trophy and weighs a ton! The names on it go back to 1939 and are interesting to read.
The second trophy that I received is one called The President’s Trophy and is given to a club member every year who makes a significant contribution to the club. I am honored to have gotten the trophy and will continue to work on making the Manitoba Camera Club a welcoming and valuable place for people interested in photography to come to.
The following images also placed in the competition.