One of my goals this year, was to enter image competition at our national salon through the professional photographers of Canada. I have been a bit hesitant in the past for a few reasons, but the largest one was I was chicken. Well, myself and 3 others made a bet that we had to enter this year. This year the judges were tough... OK, that might be a bit of an understatement! There were award winning photographers who didn't get any images accepted, my jaw was on the floor for most of the competition as incredible image after incredible image was getting rejected.
When I found out one of mine was accepted to hang at image salon I was more than thrilled!!! I shot this image last summer when we had all of those awful forest fires... the smoke was awful, but we got some truly unique wedding images here in Saskatoon. My mentor pushed me to enter this image (and I'm glad I listened! LOL).
The first image is straight out of camera, you can see working with the smoke wasn't easy for these shots where the bride and groom were far away. That was my biggest hurdle with this image. Luckily my bride and groom were so photogenic and made the posing so easy!
The second image was what my client received, which is our standard retouching for all of our wedding images.
The third was retouched for about 8 hours specifically for image salon, which is quite a bit more time than I would spend on an average wedding image, but the results helped me place!
All in all, I was so happy that I entered. I learned a lot! Some of which was how to shoot and edit for salon, while others was posing and composition for my every day shooting. I'm so happy I finally concurred my fears, bit the bullet and entered. Now wish me luck for next year!
