This year has flown past, another tricky year for all of us. With the lockdowns it has been hard to find projects to concentrate on, luckily we still have the foxes to keep me going, more about them later…
This year I decided to dedicate my time to entering more images into competitions, as well as getting as much shooting as I could. In 2020 I had entered into the Federation of European Photographers Awards, just to dip my toe. I entered two categories, sport (of course) & nature. Managed a 9th place in Nature, very cool, these comps have a amazing range of images & a large entry, so to gain a top ten was a great achievement for my first year.
In Sports I received the Silver Camera Award, second place, shit, second in Europe, I’ll take that…lol.
So onto 2021. Having winter to go through images, unfortunately, I had shot very little motocross during 2020. No racing had taken place at all, a few days at the practise track, so didn’t have the array of shots I would normally have. I managed to find a good amount, so the processing started.
Nature wasn’t as difficult, having the foxes visit every night made cute images easy to get. All images were entered in January, with the results made public in March. Again another good year, bit of a slip in Sports, to 4th position. But still a great achievement, where as Nature, I managed a 6th, so a huge improvement with all three images receiving Distinctions, it is a very tight competition, with single points between places.
So all in all a good start to the year… Next up was the British Institute of Professional Photographers Awards, I am an Associate member of this Institute, so for the last few years have entered images. I will admit I do find some of the categories a bit strange, how they are grouped. The FEP is very simple, they have a category that will suit all images. The BIPP have four main categories, with a few more sub categories. In June I entered my images into the regional competition, Sport, Wildlife & entered a few in Pet Portraits, love a good horse shot..
The results came in at a very nice evening, with many of the regions photographers there. Nice venue, food, great evening, even better, my image “Charge” won the sub category for Regional Pet Portrait Photographer of the Year & also won one of the main categories, awarded Regional Portrait Photographer of the Year… Wow.
“First Light” won myself Regional Wildlife Photographer of the Year, sub category, also winning the main category Regional Commercial Photographer of the Year.
My Motocross work won Regional Photojournalist of the Year. My biggest surprise, after winning two of the four main awards, I was given the award of Regional Photographer of the Year.. Amazing…
It was then onto the national competition, images entered, I was informed that ten of my images had made the finals, this was great news. Unfortunately on the night my images just were not enough, except “First Light”, that was given a Gold Award, only eight were given. Not a bad effort, but room for improvement. It’s great to see others images, it’s a great way to get inspired, fired up for the next year….
And that’s where we are today, it’s time to search out next years entries & push & hope for a few more points…
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