It’s November (Seriously?!? When did that happen?) and in the photography world, that means it’s award season. Hopefully this will be a two-part post, but we’ll see!
The Intermountain Professional Photographers Association (IPPA – which can easily be confused with the International Pet Photography Awards – also IPPA, so maybe I’ll just call it Intermountain PPA) had their annual conference and award dinner last week. The awards include people who have earned photography degrees and other organization recognitions through Intermountain PPA, as well as awards from the annual photography competition.
I took home several awards from the photography competition, including the ‘Animal Portrait Image of the Year’, 2nd and 3rd place in the Animal Portrait competion. I also received a pin for ‘4 of 4’ – submitting at least 4 images to the competition, and having at least 4 ‘merits’ (scoring at least 80 our of 100, based on a variety of criteria).
Additionally, I tied for ‘Rookie of the Year’, which is an award for first-time entrants in the photography competition, and it is based on your highest scoring image. A friend of mine from the Park City Photography Club and I tied as first-time competition entrants and we both took home trophies.
Two other members of the Park City Photography Club (not a PPA affiliate, but a casual group of photographers of all levels) took home awards, and we got a write up in Town Lift, a local Park City, Utah news source.
Intermountain PPA took photos of all the award winners with the Professional Photographers of America’s current President, Mark Campbell.
The conference (it was just more than an awards dinner!) also had Kristi Odom, renowned wildlife photographer, conservationist and Nikon Ambassador speak to us on two different topics: taking photographs with impact, and making an emotional connection with photography.
Both talks were fantastic, and gave me a sense of direction for my photography. After the Embark course that just wrapped up, and having signed up for the second course in the series, Emerge, I knew that I needed to create more impactful photographs, but wasn’t really sure how to go about doing it. Kristi gave me some very good ideas about how to move forward with story-telling and strenghtening the emotional connection in photographs.
This was the first Intermountain PPA conference and awards dinner I have attended, and it was fantastic; I was able to connect with a lot of local photographers, had a big ‘ah-ha’ moment with my photography, and yes, picked up a few awards!
If you’d like to learn more about my photography, or more about the Park City Photography Club, or Intermountain PPA, please contact me – I’d love to talk with you!
Dogumentary Pet Photography
