Going into 2022, I continued with my goal of improving my photography skills. Part of that journey includes entering competitions for feedback and ultimately receiving my accreditations from Professional Photographers of America and Animal Image Makers. The awesome thing is, now there are so many competitions specific to pet photography, so I entered a couple of other competitions that weren't initially on my list.
Unleashed - Emerge
I started the year enrolled in Emerge, (part 2 of Embark from last year) through Unleashed Pet Photography Education, which is more of a challenge than a competition. It consisted of 12 very specific challenges in a 6-month period. It's pretty tough to keep up with the challenges and things got a little crazy, I fell behind and then dropped out. I will be redoing the challenge in 2023 and I hope to finish this time.
Animal Image Makers
It feels like forever ago, but I think it was March when I entered Animal Image Makers Competition. The rules allow for entering up to 9 images in any of the various categories, and I made sure to use all the spots I could. It was tough, because I didn't feel like they were good enough, and deciding which ones to go with was so hard.
All images also needed a digital matte on each image and the matte impacted the scoring. I guess judges don't like white mattes, so I needed to find a perfect color. Not an easy task and some of mine ended up looking like old rotten avocado or baby poop. There were some discussions between the judges about my poor matting job, but I think I learned a little and will hopefully do better next year.
There were over 800 images entered, and even with my bad matting, I was still super excited about my scores.
- One 87 for the image above - Excellent
- One 86 - Excellent
- One 85 - Excellent
- Three 80s - Deserving of a Merit
- One 79 - Above Average
- Two 78 - Above Average
The above image also took 3rd place in its category and won a Judge's Choice Award!
Professional Photographers of America
Next, I entered PPA's competition, which is not animal specific and broken into two parts. The first part is broken into geographical districts. The images that score above 80 automatically move forward to the Internation Photography Competition.
I could enter 4 images. I did fix my mattes I think they were a little better than my AIM mattes. The images below on the left are the images I entered into Districts. The second image, with the fence did not merit, but the others did. The first and third images made the top 10 list for the Western District.
Once the district judging was completed, I was able to swap out the image that didn't merit for another one. The replacement image didn't merit either, but two of the images received an Imaging Excellence rating and one received a Merit (showcase).
Pet Photographer of the Year
The final competition I entered for the year was the Pet Photographer of the Year competition, which is another international competition, but specific to animals. Wow, there were so many amazing images, so I was happy to see two of mine made the top 100 and one made the top 25.
Overall, I'm thrilled with how well my images did and the progress I made toward my certifications, but at the same time, I'm super worried that I'll never be able to get this lucky again.
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