It’s that time of year, again. The PPA International Print Competition (IPC) is August 12-15. By now, all entries have been submitted by photographers throughout the world and the PPA headquarters in Atlanta, GA has hundreds of print cases being unpacked and readied for the judging. Hundreds of photographers like myself are just a little bit nervous and are trying to put the fate of their images out if their minds while we wait for the next few weeks to crawl by until the results are posted.
And the rest of you are shaking your heads, wondering what all the fuss is about.
The IPC is a culmination of the last year’s work. Most photographers have been entering local, state and district competitions and this is the final step in judging. Some brave souls have skipped all of the preliminary steps and are only submitting images to IPC. They’re braver than I.
Although we may have different methods of madness, the process is still the same. We’ve honed our techniques, both in capturing the image and in post-processing it until we are left with the best image possible.
The print competition process involves, scores, merits and degrees. But that is not all. And that’s really not the most important part. The important part of the process is that we learn, continuously. And when you learn continuously, you improve continuously. And in our industry, improvement is good.
Competition is sometimes a confusing process. In the beginning, I was overwhelmed with all of the rules, criteria and details involved in working on my images. It can be confusing. And it can seem like more trouble than it’s worth.
I don’t think that there’s anything I can say to convince you that competition is good for you – the real convincing argument would be for you to observe a judging. I highly encourage everyone to attend a judging on a state or district level before you decide against competition. At the very least, you will have an exceptional several hours of education by watching the judges score and critique several hundred images.
The next step would be to enter. Once. Just make a commitment to do it. Just once. I swear you will be hooked. Or maybe not.
I know I was hooked. I am totally and utterly head over heels in love with competition. Competition has made me a MUCH better photographer. Every year that I compete, my work reaches new levels of technical excellence because I constantly push myself to refine my skills, both in the studio and on the computer, and in doing that I’ve looked at my images way more objectively than I ever have in order to eliminate anything that might make it less than a stellar image. It’s an improvement process and a learning experience. It’s not about the merits, scores and degrees (although they’re great reinforcement) – it’s about improving what I’m doing.
I’m not all that and a bag of chips, but if you look at my work from 2009 (my first year in business before I competed) and compare it to my current work, you would not believe it was from the same photographer.
Challenge yourself to excel. You won’t be sorry.
For more information about the PPA print competition process, please go to http://www.ppa.com/competitions/