I’m feeling very proud! Two of my images have won Bronze bar awards in a national professional photography competition run by The Guild of photographers.

Receiving awards from such a prestigious association is incredibly important to me not only for the professional recognition it brings but also because it provides important assurances to my clients that they have chosen a photographer who is able to provide a certain standard of art work.

In addition to this, it provides me with an opportunity to have my work assessed by a panel of highly experienced and demanding judges which allows me further hone my skills and develop my abilities. This, in addition to the various training and other professional development I continuously undertake is very important in ensuring that I am providing my clients with the best possible quality work.

For those that are interested in how these competitions are judged, there are four key ingredients based on international judging criteria that the panel consider when assessing whether an image is a) of a professional standard and b) worthy of an award against the many other hundreds of submissions.

• Subject and Story telling
• Composition & creativity
• Lighting
• Technical and Post Production Excellence

Essentially, images must have something about them to capture and hold the viewers attention, they must be thoughtfully composed in a way that is interesting and pleasing to the eye, lit competently – whether using natural or studio lighting, must be shot with technical competence using the right blend of settings and equipment for the particular image and, importantly, must be ‘finished’ effectively in the post production editing stage.
People often forget about this last part when they think about photography but it is absolutely critical in producing quality artwork and really differentiates average and high quality photography.

Whilst photography is actually far more technical than people often realize, it is obviously very much an art rather than a science (particularly when working with children or animals!) When I’m photographing I usually never know until I am back at the computer working through the editing process if any of the images are particularly special (of course you know roughly how its going but its not until this final stage that you really spot the stand out shots). But every now when you do, it’s a wonderful feeling 🙂

If you would like to know more about booking a baby photoshoot with me please take a look here for more information Baby photography.

To find out more about pet photography take a look here Pet photography