Angel Eyes.

Stars of Coldest Night.

Amber Waves of Beer.

The Coming Darkness.

Here are my four State competition entries. It’s been a load of work, and yes I know I’m into black and white this year. The challenge with competition is analyzing your images in depth, attempting to determine how they’ll merit not only on an impact level but on a technical level. Choosing and prepping can be as hard as actually taking the photo. State and national competition judges are fussy, to put it mildly.

Just to explain the format you see here. In State and International competition you can only enter up to 4 prints in a year. They have to be on a 16×20 print, so if the image is not that size, you use the remainder of the canvas like a border (as you see here). Prints are judged by a panel of I believe four. You can watch from the audience, but they don’t know who made the image. They score from 1-100 (more about scoring elements here). 70’s is an average pro image. If you get in the 80’s it’s getting really good, and the 90’s is phenomenal. Occasionally someone makes a 99-100, though it’s not common. A 100 would be a perfect image (though I’m not sure there’s any such thing).

I’ll be talking about this more on the next Pro Photo Show podcast. I’ll see how these score. Then I’ll take the ones that do best (replacing any of they score low) and send them to the PPA International competition. Whether I win or not does not matter… Wait who am I kidding, I want these to take home every possible award and be better than anyone! Seriously though no matter where you place in competition, it’s a healthy exercise that forces you to challenge your skills. Whether I Do great or just OK, I gained more experience… Gav