2018 was a pretty fantastic year for us – we were accepted into Fearless Photographers, named one of the PWPC‘s Top Wedding Photographers in Canada, and booked our first international wedding. And it seems the momentum is continuing into 2019 – a couple more destination weddings to look forward to, a full calendar, and finalists in the Shoot and Share Photo Contest!
I decided to enter a handful of my photos into this year’s contest. Shoot and Share hosts this every year for professional photographers from across the globe. As with any publication or recognition, only the person who clicked the shutter may enter their images, so these all came directly from me. This community exists to inspire, connect, and educate, and is focused on serving, contributing for a greater cause, and celebrating each other’s work. The contest truly is the only truly fair one I know of – no names attached to photos, no watermarks… no popularity contest. To vote, four images would pop up on your screen. You’d click your favourite out of the four. Then four more would show up, and you’d repeat the process. All day. Every day. Random images would continue to show up. Every few days, the images with the lowest percentage of votes would drop off for a total of twelve rounds. The voting continued until a winner was selected from each of the 21 categories.
Last year, over 175,000 people were involved from over 160 countries; over 1.1 million photos were submitted, and 81,000,000+ total votes were cast.
I spent a lot of time voting, despite the fact that I had no idea who I was voting for – I was consistently wowed by the work of so many incredible photographers. And last week… I got my results!
A finalist! I couldn’t believe I made it that far! I was surprised every week to see I was still in the running throughout all these rounds! I am incredibly humbled, so very grateful for those who voted for me, as well as to the couples who trusted me to capture these beautiful moments. In the end, once ALL the votes were tallied, I ended up with 19 out of the 25 images I submitted in the top 30% or higher, and one image in the top 10% of ALL photos submitted (placed 316th out of 11,696 in its category)! Here’s a few of them (that raw emotion from the crying groom moments before his bride walked down the aisle placed us in the final!):
Thank you again, for the experience and the inspiration! Here’s to another amazing year 🙂
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