Award Winning Photography Images April 2012

A little bit late with this post considering that the awards for April were announced over a week ago, but better late than never!  April was a good month for me with the monthly SWPP photography competitions.  I have mentioned in a previous post that the SWPP have changed the competitions this year and there are less categories and they are generally tougher.  I love the changes and love the fact that there have been on average around 30 Golds in total each month from hundreds of entries.  April I won 1 Gold and had two images Highly Commended…and one of those is from an area of photography that I “stopped” doing 2 years ago….lol.  Anyways, here are the images.

 

 

 

The above image won Gold in the Monochrome Photography category for the month of April.  It is a black and white version of the same image that won a Gold Award last month in the Open category.  I explained a lot about this band photography image in that post, but will talk a little bit about it again.  This sort of photograph, is an area that I feel is my strongest strength when it comes to creating images.  I have the finished image in my head when I start and I set about shooting each element of the image on it’s own (excluding the dog here…she was shot with Ben and his icecream) and then combining the best of all the shots in Photoshop.  I do this for a number of reasons, but the main reasons are that I get to ensure each member of the band is properly lit, and I get to ensure that each member has the best pose, expression, and feel.  Sure, I could have done it all together as a group shot, but inevitably there will be someone blinking, a weird shadow, or just something generally not right about a pose.  This allows me to ensure every element of the image is perfect….and this is probably why the majority of the photography awards that I win are for composite images like this.

 

 

This image was Highly Commended in the Portrait Avante Garde category for the month of April.  Some of you might recognise the image from my recent shoot with Norwich pop-punk band Keep It Secret.  I entered it into the Avante Garde category for a number of reasons, the most important being that this image is very much against the rules in that I used a very wide lens, very close to the subject.  This gives it the more cartoonish look cause by the lens distortion.  Why didn’t it get a Gold Award?  Well, I think there are a couple of reasons really.  The key light is just about spot on, but there is very little light in the eye camera right.  I also think that instead of having one light directly behind I either should have added a third light and put it 45 degrees to one side behind…or just moved the rear light to one of the sides.  This would have added a better separation / rim light to the subject…as it stands here, there isn’t much to separate the subject from the background.

 

 

This image is the one that surprises me a bit.  It surprises me that it was awarded anything at all as I don’t do wedding photography at all.  But, this image was Highly Commended in the Wedding Portrait category.  I should state again for anyone reading this…I don’t do weddings anymore!  This wedding was booked 2 years ago just before I made the decision to stop doing weddings.  But, I was able to apply a little bit of the style and processing that I do with my band and musician photography and give this couple some wedding portraits that they loved…and amazingly was Highly Commended as well.

 

So there you have my photography awards for April 2012.  Hope you enjoyed!  Please feel free to leave any comment or questions below, and if you need any photography be sure to get in touch.