I am the Overall Winner of the SWPP Member's Wedding Photography Competition 2008

I am pleased to annouce that on Sunday evening I was named the Overall Winner of the SWPP Member's Wedding Photography Competition.

The award was presented to me at the SWPP (Society of Wedding and Portrait Photogarphers) Annual Awards Dinner held on Sunday evening in London. The dinner was held during the SWPP's six day convention which sees photographers from all over the world converge on the Novotel Hotel to attend numerous photography seminars, classes and a large trade show. Over the 5 days the convention attracted over 12,000 visitors!

Unfortunately I was only able to attend the convention for part of the Saturday which was a shame as I would have loved to have been there longer (I broke down on the M25 whilst traveling ot the show but's that's a whole other story!). There were a host of great photographers speaking at the event including Joe Photo, Kevin Kubota, Jeff Ascough, Mark Seymour and Jose Villa. With over 400 people in the room, the awards dinner itself was a great experience.

Numerous awards were handed out including 15 category winners from the SWPP monthly competitions and an overall wedding photographer of the year award. My own particular award was voted for by the SWPP members on the society's forum; each week members were invited to submit their favourite wedding image within a particular category with each of the weekly winners going forward to the annual vote - of which my image came top.

I also found out that I also came third in the Traditional Wedding Photographer of the Year Award,  obviously it would have been lovely to win this also but I am more than happy with the award I did receive!

I have posted my winning image below, together with a photo of me collecting my award on stage from Jon Jenkins.  What a great start to 2009!

Gold Award in SWPP Monthly Competition - Wedding Traditional Category

I was pleased to learn today that I have been awarded a Gold in the SWPP (Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers) monthly competition.

The photograph which received the award was a reworked version of a photograph I took earlier in the year.

This is the second gold award I have received since I started entering the competition in April this year but it is my first in a wedding photography category so I'm very pleased.

My aim for 2009 will be to get at least 6 golds within the wedding photography categories, it won't be easier but I will be covering weddings at some lovely venues next year so I'm confident I can do it!

October SWPP Awards Results

The results were recently released for the October competition last week and I was awarded three silvers and two bronzes.  This is quite a good result but I'm quite disappointed that I didn't get another gold as I thought a couple had a very good chance.  The image below (entered in Wedding Contemporary) was one that I thought was perhaps deserving of a gold but it received a silver.  Oh well, always next month!!

Gold Award in September 2008 SWPP Competition

Firstly - I must apologise for the fact I haven't updated the blog for so long!  Things have been so hectic with weddings and portrait sessions in the past couple of months, whilst I'm also building my new website.... no rest for the wicked!!

I'm also conscious that I haven't updated the images on my website for a while with none of my recent weddings being on there.  This should be rectified when my new site goes live in the next few weeks.

Anyway I was pleased to find out this week that I was awarded a Gold award in the latest SWPP monthly competition.  Unfortunately, not for a wedding image (which I would have preferred - instead I was given a silver and two bronzes for the wedding categories) but for a shot I took of a seagull a couple of weeks ago.  Here it is:

SWPP Awards - July

The results for the July competition were announced recently and I was awarded 3 Silvers and 2 Bronze, so quite a successful month.

Here are the three images which received silver:

SWPP Awards - June 2008

Each month the SWPP (one of the UK's largest photographic organisations) holds a competition for it's members, whereby photographers are invited to submit their images for marking.

There are 22 categories in total and each member is able to submit one image per category. Due to the relevance of the categories, I tend to submit photos in 5 or 6 categories each month.

Each photograph is then individually judged and awarded one of four classifications; unclassified (not good!), bronze, silver or gold.

I do not know the official statistics, and obviously the figures change each month, but I would estimate that around half the images get bronze, a quarter get unclassified and the remaining quarter receive either silver or gold (although gold is probably awarded to only 5% or so of the submitted images).

I have only been entering the competition for the past three months. The first month I submitted two photographs which both received bronze, the second month I received one silver and 5 bronzes and last month I received 3 silvers and 3 bronzes.

I was obviously very pleased with June's results and it is encouraging to see that my results have been improving month on month so far.

The images for which I received silver in last month's competition are below: