Wedding Photographer Pete Bistro Seminar and Print Competition
Getting out and meeting other photographers to share their tips and experiences is a great benefit for us self employed peeps as many of us work on our own in our studios or homes. Fortunately I have Bondy here to keep me company and make me tea all day but it can be quite a lonely profession for many of us.
I have always loved being an proactive members of the Master Photographers Association (MPA) and enjoyed the benefits that being a member of the Southern region bought to my business. The seminars, workshops and marketing sharing was invaluable, not to mention the annual print competitions that kept us on our toes. Sadly in 2012 the MPAs Southern region seized to exist due to a fall in members and the existing members disbursed their membership to the London/Essex or Wessex regions. Since this time, I’ll be honest I hadn’t been making the most of my MPA membership as the travel put me off.
Last week however, I decided it was time to leave the comforts of my Brighton bubble and head down to Southampton for the Wessex annual print competition which was also tied in with the Pete Bristo wedding seminar.
Click on each photo to see it full size…
It was an interesting start to the afternoon of what I felt was a rather opinionated Pete telling us a lot about him self which resulted in us running out of time at the end, but the practical was great. As you can see some some of the photos shown here are just my ‘snaps’ but Pete explained in detail about light and posing which us photographers will use going forward to our next wedding! Pete had a great knowledge and understanding of his field of expertise – he is a Fellow MPA photographer after all (that’s an almighty highly qualified grade of photographer by the way!).
The afternoon ended with Pete judging the print competition. I had entered into Wedding Photography, including one civil partnership print, fashion/glamour, children under 5’s, pets and press/PR.
My heart broke as I saw some of my proudest prints fall out by the way side, especially the pet category which I thought was a clear certain, something to do with not being able to see the dogs eyes… must have been all the fur! But each one was given a positive critique on how it could be improved which is great to feed back in to the studio.
All was not lost though as I received two Merit awards!
One for fashion and glamour and the other for under 5’s, yey well done me! See below for the prints I entered…
It would be great to have the Southern MPA region back for any big cheeses that can hear this, but the Wessex visit was well worth it plus Phase Photography has now strengthened it’s ‘Award Winning’ credibility.
Obviously after the wedding seminar and print critique we are now even better photographers, so please do get in touch for your photography needs!