I have been promising myself this for years and well everyone says its the THE thing to do get traffic to your website. Its a brand new website and I think its great (feedback always welcome). I feel that I just need more viewers to see just how good I am - so here goes.
First Topic - Always a problem - How to get started? I decided that not only will I do this Blog but I would enter more competitions. Now I am not renowned for entering let alone winning comps. so again its not always easy to get started. I first entered some local competitions years ago for my town and found that I won 3 of the 4 categories mainly of 'The Flying Scotsman' steam train - Brilliant. The pictures are still on display at the local Railway station but many, many years later I still have only entered 2 others.!!
Both of these were from 'The Professional Photography Magazine' A mag. that I subscribe to and find really useful for keeping up to date with current trends. ( Not the least for introducing me to the queen of Blogging/Tweeting @JasmineStar - and a good looking and fantastic photographer too- Its not fair!!!)
Sorry back to the comps. Last year I entered my first image. Very Difficult. Not to enter but to choose which one of my thousands of images I have available.
My Brides love most of them so I trawled through my faves folder and decide to use one of these. Now I know that you should check the rules and cut your cloth accordingly, ie match the picture to the requirements!! but I really did like my one image of the bride on top of the Lancashire Hills one Summer evening with a backdrop of the Local Panoptican Halo - even though the Title to the wedding competition was 'Reportage Photography' - I knew best - Oh Oh- no I didn't It did not get a look in, and when I saw the winning entries I realised that I had taken the wrong the path. (I still believed my image was 'better than theirs though) It was just the WRONG image.
This year I decided to try again, remembering that the competition is not only open to ALL UK Photographers but was open WORLDWIDE (this was reflected with over 20 countries represented in the winning/commended list)
My image this time was from a great/fun wedding of Jennie and Lee; they booked me ages ago then changed their minds and decided to get married abroad. They were due to fly to Mexico on the Saturday with the wedding being on the Tuesday - unfortunately the ASH CLOUD saga meant that they had to cancel, so hastily rang me back and asked if I was still free in 2 weeks time, Hurray I was- they are a brilliant couple and I was really looking forward to it.I took a number of 'reportage' style shots as Jennie came down the stairs all dressed up and the emotion of the moment that all her Bridesmaids had, as Jennie entered the room, just burst-out and everyone began to cry. Brilliant - just remember to keep shooting and dont cry with them!!
I picked the second one of a series of three or four which I thought summed up the JOY of the moment, I did a little bit of actions/work on it and sent it off.
When I received the email to say that it had been shortlisted I was elated. This was not a local competition or a 'club' competition. This was a WORLDWIDE competition, and my image although didn't take first place (which was a fantastic photograph) did receive a COMMENDATION.
The moral of the story is that if you want to win competitions then you must make the image relevant to the category and dont just pick it because YOU like it.
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