After an epic 3 days last week the Australian Institute of Professional Photography (AIPP) held the Australian Professional Photography Awards (APPA) in Sydney. I was both an entrant and a judge. Entering takes ages, thinking about what to enter, re thinking about it, then over thinking it and trying to clear my thought to focus on what will be an award image. Even though i’m a judge it is still very hard to get up 4 great images to enter. Knowing all the effort that goes into entering, it can be hard to give a not so nice score to a print when it comes up to be judged. I know what it is like to just miss the mark, it happened to my twice with 2 of my prints comming within 1 and 2 points of getting an award. It proves to the people out there that judges are human and know what it is like to just miss out. I can see what the issues are with those images now, over thinking about it blinded me when I was finalising them. So next year, less thinking, more gutt instinct!
Congratulations to every one that picked up some awards. It was a pleasure to be able to talk up some prints into the gold catergory, a place reserved for really stand out work. When a link to all the award images is avaliable i’ll post it up.
In saying that, i did pick up a Silver in the wedding catergory (above), Silver in the portrait catergory (this image contains artistic nudity, if you are old enough please click here to view, you will need to enter the password “ok” to view) as well as a silver and silver distinction in the wedding album catergory. I really like getting awards for wedding albums, it isn’t just one stand out image from one wedding being judged. It’s the whole story being judged, in my case over 100 images in each of the albums. So i’m pretty happy about that.
So now I have to start thinking about next year now, but not too hard.
