2020 Photographic Competitions | Reflections
This was my sixth year competing in photographic competitions. I usually think about what images I may enter throughout the year and then narrow down my favorites and try them out in Professional Photographers of South Carolina's annual print comp. I was feeling pretty confident coming off a bronze medal in 2019 (all 4 of my images merited at IPC).
Following Professional Photographers of America's guidelines, this was the first year there was a special wedding category. The point of separating weddings into their own category was to have separate wedding-specialized jurors that take into consideration the pressures of making beautiful portraits during an actual wedding. I decided to try out a few wedding images from past years along with my old standbys of landscapes.
Titles: The Best Man, Dropped the Ring Already
These scored a 77 and 79, respectively - the "Above Average" Category. (80 is what's needed to receive a merit.)
I was excited to enter my first underwater image. Title: Underwater Wonder. There was a lot of discussion by the judges and most of them appreciated how difficult it is to make images underwater with ambient light only. This one did well - 84, Deserving of a Merit.
Title: Long Day at School
My frog images have always done well in competition, so I thought this one was a shoo-in. Alas, it scored a 77.
Title: Hunter Museum of Art
I've always liked this image of the art museum in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I thought it might be good as a night time architecture piece. It scored a 78.
Title: Electric Sky
I made this photograph at 11pm in the parking lot of Ellis Creek Fish Camp. I was driving home from Columbia, SC and there was an intense lightning storm near the coast. I did not have my camera and tripod with me, so I was driving fast to get home, all the while trying to figure out a good foreground for the lightning. I was also mad at myself for not buying a lightning trigger, which I had been thinking about for a couple years. It turns out I didn't need one because the lightning was so frequent I could just do a long exposure and capture several strikes. The judges liked this one - it scored an 85.
Since I only had two images that merited at the state level I had to come up with 2 more for the International Photographic Competition (IPC). Districts didn't happen in 2020 due to COVID. In the end I edited Electric Sky and Underwater Wonder by removing some distracting elements and took one last stab at Long Day at School. Then I went back and edited one that previously did not merit at IPC. I adjusted the crop to include a sliver of sky and lightened some of the rocks.
