Photography competitions are funny things that sometimes give me mixed emotions — they’re a bit like climbing competitions in that regard I guess.
A few months ago I received an email from the Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival inviting me to enter some images in their photography competition. I was about to dismiss it as another email that was just going to suck up time, my finger hovered over good ‘ol delete button, when I hesitated and thought about it for a moment…
You see, photography competitions just aren’t that important to me, though they certainly sometimes have great prizes. I’ve been shooting professionally for 16 years and you can count on one hand the number of competitions I’ve entered. Seth Goldwin’s advice “Don’t poll your friends. It’s your art, not an election” goes a fair way to summing up how I feel about it. But then I thought about it for a moment, decided that the Vancouver festival was something I’d like to support and maybe I could help in a very small way by just being a player. So I selected four photos and sent off my entry, all up it took only about ten minutes.
So now the festival was held recently and I can report that this photo of mine won the Grand Prize:
And this won second place in the Mountain Sports category:
You can see all the winning entries on the VIMFF site here.
I’m happy to have done so well, it was quite unexpected. Mind you, I’m not sure if/when I’m going to be able to enjoy the two week trek in Northern Pakistan that I won, it may not fit in with my plans this year.
The competition was a fun thing though and in my opinion, that is how competitions should be. I just wish I’d been able to hop half-way around the world to enjoy the festival and to pick up the prize in person – but I was there in spirit. If anyone sees the guy who volunteered to pick up the prize for me, could they let me know, I haven’t heard from him for a few weeks and believe he may last have been spotted boarding a plane for Islamabad… ;-p
Here’s another photo that I entered, this one in the Mountain Flora/Fauna category. It didn’t win anything but that doesn’t matter. It’s one of my most personally satisfying images from recent years — and, after all, it’s “my art”.
