Shoot and Share is a community of photographers who believes in the business practice of shooting images, and then sharing them all with their clients. Most of us don’t do in person sales, or much sales for that matter, but believe in giving you all your images either online through a company like PASS (like me) or even giving USB’s full of the images. Either way it happens, that makes you a shoot and sharer. Every year, Shoot and Share puts together the shoot and share contest, and every year it gets better. If you didn’t see my break down of how the contest works, you can see it all over on this past blog post. To break it down, it’s just an awesome, super fair photo contest judged by the people who vote. It’s anonymous so you don’t know WHO you’re voting for (unless you know the image from a certain photographer) and it’s known to suck all the extra time you have in your life away from you. BUT it’s SO dang fun!

This year was different for me in years past. I was in a funk this winter. I felt like none of my images were up to par for the contest this year. I have been doing the contest for 3 years now, and I know what it takes to win, but every year I’m surprised. Most of the time, the images that I think are going to make it far don’t make it AS far, and the ones I don’t think do. I have learned that I have to remove myself from the situation a lot of the time. I have to remember that the viewer wasn’t there during the wedding and may not know that the image of a bride hugging her dad was as sweet as it was because he was diagnosed with cancer just a few weeks prior. They don’t know what’s going on in that exact moment, and sometimes that makes the photo even better! Because of that, I was more strategic in my entering this year, and it think it payed off quite a bit.

I didn’t get around to voting as often as I did in the past years either. I think part of the excitement of the contest is that you want to vote to see which of your own images are still in, but I spent SOOOO much time in the past that I knew I didn’t want to do that this year. I gave myself guidelines. I would go to bed, and give myself 15 minutes to vote. Once the 15 minutes was up, I was done, and so I think I only saw one of my images the whole contest. I got emails here and there from friends showing me I was still in, but I tried not to stress about it, or worry. For Pete’s sake, it’s just a contest, right!?

Months went past and voting finally ended and they started to roll out the winners. It was awesome this year to see how many of my friends made it into the top spots!! They have been doing some amazing things, and I’m SO lucky to call them friends! Some of the best freakin’ photographers in the business! Then this morning it happened.

I got the email that ALL the results were in. I didn’t think much of it, but tried checking the results on my phone with no luck. One thing about us crazy photographers is we like to break the internet constantly, so i’m sure that we were ALL trying to get on the same page all at the same time. I was out running errands, got home, and started working on other things when I got a text from my friend Raelene asking me how I did. I completely spaced it, but since I was home then, I had a better chance of being able to see them on my computer instead of my phone.

I was surprised this year by how well I did. I was impressed that so many of my images made it to the top 20%. There were over 330,000 images submitted this year, and being in the top 20% is CRAZY to me! I love my clients, and I love the images that I get to deliver to them time and time again, and it’s just reassuring to know that I’m not the only one that likes looking at them. 🙂

Like I said up top, I may not have had any images in the top 100 this year, but I did have one finalist image, and it makes me SO happy that this is the one that made it.

I’m so dang excited for this year and for the images that I get to capture for my clients. I know it’s not all about awards, or contests, or any of that, and at the end of the day, my clients are what matters most. But I do love making them feel EXTRA special when their photos get noticed! 🙂 Now if only wedding season started sooner!!!! 😀