Unique Images Photography | Weddings | Portraits | Fashion » Wedding, Portrait, and Fashion Photography Blog

Ok, that was a long blog post title! For those of you who don’t know what the ISPWP is, it is an incredible organisation dedicated to finding the very best wedding photographers in the world and holding competitions between them every quarter-year. I have always been honoured to be a member and to have placed in each of the competitions I’ve entered so far, coming in the top 20 wedding studios in the world each time.

Here are the images that placed for me this time round (in chronological order):

What’s better than coming first in a contest filled with amazing photography from talented photographers and judged by experts in the field? Coming first and third!

We have been accepted as members of the Best of Wedding Photography association. The Best of Wedding Photography board includes world-renown photographers David Beckstead, Ben Chrisman, Matt Adcock & Sol Tamargo (Del Sol Photography), Glen Johnson, Anna Kuperberg, Crash Taylor, and David Ziser.

From the Best of Wedding Photography site:

A few times each year, our editorial staff submits a list of outstanding photographers to the BOWP Review Board, who then vote separately on whom to invite . . . We are the premier invitation-only association for the world’s top wedding photographers. Best of Wedding Photography employs a unique system of peer-review to ensure that membership standards remain uncommonly high. We look for photographers who are leaders in the field – both in terms of the quality and style of imagery they produce and their level of success and recognition by brides, fellow photographers, and others in the wedding industry.

Best of Wedding Photography has capped their membership at only 350 of the best photographers in the world, so Jessica and I are really happy to have been accepted.

I’m pleased to tell you that I recently had eight of my images place in the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers summer contest, giving me an over-all placing of 15th in the world. This is truly an international contest: out of the twenty place-getters, there are ten different countries represented! It’s great to see such a cool diversity and world-wide representation. I am honoured to have placed in among such skilled and talented photographers.

Although this is the summer contest, the deadline for submissions was earlier in the year when wedding “season” up here had only just started, so I am really happy to have done so well. I placed in these categories: Wedding Ceremony, Wedding Reception, Emotional Impact, Bride Portrait, Bridal Party Portrait, Engagement Portrait, Pure Art.

Here are my placing images:

We are proud to announce our official accreditation as a “green” photography studio.

What does this mean? Firstly, I’m not going to show up to photograph your wedding in a tie-dye shirt. Well, probably not. Most of the aspects that were investigated in the accreditation process involve things that happen behind the scenes in our business. For example, we are almost entirely paperless and offer a very convenient online contract system as well as other easy electronic processes. Also, our building’s cooling system is very environmentally-friendly—and effective! There is a huge list of things that are involved for us, but I want to focus on the things you’ll see. Really what this means for our clients is simply more options. We have introduced very stylish eco-friendly print and album choices—and of course digital options—and will continue to build upon them as more become available. We have not discontinued any of our other album and print lines, because our goal is to open up more choices to those people who want them.

If anyone would like more info, feel free to contact me.

This is just a quick post before I blog a wedding later today to say that the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers spring contest results came in this morning and I got third overall – yay! My images placed in several categories there and the overall placing reflects a total score. The entries and standard of photography there is absolutely incredible and I feel very privileged to have placed so well. That said, I plan to pull out all the stops and completely kick butt next time!

If you are not a wedding or portrait photographer you are probably wondering what the WPPI 16×20 Print Contest is all about. Well, as far as wedding and portrait photography contests go, this is the biggy. It is an international contest and thousands of photographers from all over the world send in thousands of images for live judging by a panel of very highly-regarded photographers over the course of a week. Something to note is that this is not just an image contest, because this involves getting the best prints possible. Getting great prints that show the images well under the harsh competition lights is really a whole separate skill set and most photographers rely on pro labs to do this for them. In my case I printed all of my images myself, so I was in control from the very beginning of the image creation to the final product. Wait, let me just pat myself on the back. There. I feel good now.

Anyways, I’m happy to say that I received eight Accolades of Excellence awards for the images I submitted. Yay! Here are the images below, roughly in chronological order, with the most recent ones at the bottom.

That’s all.

I am really happy to announce that Unique Images Photography has been accepted into the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers. I have been accepted into various professional photography organisations over the years, but this one really makes me happy. Among their members are Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists, as well as other acclaimed professional wedding photographers from around the world.

Here is a quote from their website:

“The International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers is an organization of the best wedding photographers in the world. It was created by professional photographers to raise the standards of the wedding photography profession.

When you hire an ISPWP member, you can be sure they have passed a rigorous application process and are recognized by their peers to be at the top of their field.”

Frankly, I think the ISPWP board were just swayed by my rugged good looks, but either way, yay for us! We are currently the only photography studio in Lethbridge to be accepted into the ISPWP and one of only three in Alberta.

Bride.ca has just released the Honourable Mentions of their 2009 contest and we placed there, too. In fact, out of the 35 images six of them are ours! Yay us!

Since I didn’t submit any of our photos myself, it is interesting to see the images of ours that their judges chose. A big criteria for them was whether or not an image looked like it was distinctly wedding-y.

Their website says: “What we ultimately looked for was . . . is this a great photo or a great wedding photo? Unfortunately this meant that some incredible photographs did not make the cut, because they could have been anywhere, not necessarily at a wedding.”

This is kind of funny for me to read—and I don’t mean that sarcastically!—because I often deliberately distance myself from creating images that look wedding-y. This is especially true with the more fashion-based ideas that I come up with. I sometimes get inspiration from music photography and movie posters and I try to create a similar sort of commercial or cinematic vibe to my wedding photography—something that looks larger than life and out of the ordinary.

Anyways, I thought I’d comment on the images they chose to give a bit of a story behind each photo. So, for the first time on the blog I present to you: Captions!

This image was tricky to capture! It was taken on a small yacht on Okanagan Lake in Kelowna and the poor girl was sea-sick from the rocking of the boat. I was crouched up the very front of the boat holding a flash in one hand and my camera in the other, trying to frame the shot without getting any clutter in the background, or going blind from having the sun in the viewfinder, or falling over the side. I have two images of this setup and this is one of them. It pays to get it right the first time.