A busy night
The last twelve months have been a busy time for me, photographically speaking anyway, especially where competitions were involved. I've spent an awful lot of time over the last year selecting and preparing images for competition entries with varying degrees of success. I was disappointed not to have got past the first round of Landscape Photographer of the Year but was delighted to have won, been runner up or shortlisted in several others.
There were a couple of competitions in particular that required a lot of effort: Wex Photographer of the Year is a weekly competition with the added pressure that entries have to have been taken during the last week. Points earned for first or second place each week being accumulated over the course of the year so it was important to enter every week if possible. The monthly competitions at Felixstowe Photographic Society, the camera club that I am a member of, work in a similar fashion (though obviously on a monthly basis) with various categories for mono and colour prints and digital images meaning that up to six images can be entered each time.
So, after a long hard year of battle (yes, I know it's not quite life or death but allow me some artistic license to add a sprinkle of excitement) I was particularly looking forward to relaxing and reflecting on the year's results but that wasn't quite how things worked out.
Wex Photographic marked the end of their Photographer of the Year competition with an exhibition at the Forum in Norwich with all the winning images from the year on show, beautifully printed and framed. The standard of the competition was clear from the quality of the winning prints on display so I was really pleased that despite having missed several weeks I managed to finish third overall and had six prints included in the exhibition.
Rather than an exhibition, Felixstowe Photographic Society held an annual awards dinner. A chance to get together and, amongst other things celebrate the year's achievements. I fared rather better there, winning several trophies for the monthly competitions as well as the coveted Photographer of the Year award.
I mentioned earlier things not quite going according to plan, the problem was that both of these events took place on the same night, at venues 60 miles apart! I managed to catch the first half of one and after some spirited driving, the second half of the other so it all worked out well enough but relaxing it wasn't.
The Wexhibition will be at the forum in Norwich until February 7th