2015 Queensland Professional Photography Awards

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Each year I’m keen for the Queensland Professional Photography Awards to roll around; it’s a great opportunity to take the best images from the previous year and present them to your peers for judging. This year I tried something a bit different – as well as entering some more “normal” work from the year and some personal stuff, I found myself telling stories through some self-commissioned work. The QPPAs are also a great proving ground to help you pick the best material to put forward on a national level at the APPAs.

So, my two main goals for this year: Make a strong submission with four entries to the Illustrative category, and vet images for the APPAs in October.

How did I go? Why, I’m glad you asked! Better than expected. Beyond my wildest dreams even. Each of the eight images entered won an award! My two images in Portrait both picked up Silvers. My two in Landscape earned one Silver and one Gold. And the four in Illustrative earned two Silvers and two Silvers with Distinction. I was keen to have a red hot go at Illustrative this year, and I’m pretty happy with that outcome.

Wait, what? Gold? In LANDSCAPE? No way! Gold??!?! Yes indeed! This is my first Gold award, and I have to say, there are few things more exciting than having your print go to challenge and hearing judges making impassioned pleas to pull the rest of the panel up, then having it get over the line to gold! I’m a bit beside myself about it. I’d love to share the image with you… but it’s going to have to wait until after the APPAs in October. Yep, sorry. Anything that I’m considering entering in October stays under wraps until that judging is completed. If you see me in person, pester me about it and I’ll show you a sneaky pic on my phone 🙂

I’m super keen to share some of the Illustrative entries, but those will have to wait as well. 🙂

Although I’m not going to show you that gold image yet, I am going to talk about my other landscape image!

Silver award – Snowy Treeline

Now and again we have the chance to visit our old friends Scott and Angie in Denver, Colorado. I’ve known Scott since my first day of actual real go-to-work-and-earn-money work. Not far from where they live, there’s a lovely line of trees framing a driveway at the top of a ridge. Driving past it one day, I suggested to Scott that if it snowed in the next day or two, we’d have to come back so I could shoot it. Sure enough, the snow came down a few days later, and there it was.

Wanda snuck a few behind-the-scenes from the relative comfort of the nice warm car while I wandered around in the snow. OK, it wasn’t THAT cold.

It was one of those snow days some people might find a bit dreary; I find them to be crisp, quiet, and somehow comforting. Everything was hazy, with distant details fading away. That’s what I wanted to capture, anyway, and hopefully it did the trick.

2014 International Loupe Awards

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This year we had our first crack at the International Loupe Awards. We have a little award experience now thanks to the QPPAs and APPAs, and this is the first time our images have been judged by an international panel of judges. Very happy that we picked up five bronze awards from six entries!

Australian Professional Photography Awards 2014

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The Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPAs) represents the pinnacle of professional imagery each year. Accredited professional photographers may enter up to four images; each are judged individually, and photographers that focus (hah photographer joke there sorry what was I saying) on one category vie for the honours of winning that category. If you are curious to know what makes a category winner, check out the 2014 winners.

Last year I managed two Silvers, one in Portrait and one in Illustrative. This year, I took the four images that scored well at the 2014 QPPAs and  submitted them for the APPAs. My personal goal was to get two Silvers. Happy to say that I exceeded my goal! My two prints in Illustrative each scored Silver, and one of the two prints in Travel scored a Silver with Distinction!

It’s lovely that the certificates have my name on them, but every image is a collaboration. Each of them was carefully printed by Tristam Evison of EV Photo; I met him earlier this year at an AIPP event, and trusting him with the printing and handling of my images was definitely the right choice. Big thanks to Elizabeth, Danielle, Nigel and Shane for the teamwork on the central image above. And similarly big thanks to Kimberley and all the members of Dawn for being awesome; this image has been very good to me this year! My biggest thanks to my wife Wanda, who was with me for most of these shoots, helped me select images, poked holes and critiqued in an excellent way, and generally encouraged me to produce the best work I could.

For a closer look at each of these, check out my QPPA post from a few months back.

I have a goal for the 2015 APPAs – to perform well enough to earn my Associateship with the Australian Institute of Professional Photography. Fingers crossed!