NZIPP Iris Awards 2020

I wasn’t going to enter this year – its a such a rollercoaster. The choosing of images, how to edit them (or not depending on the category), making sure everything is correct before entering, the waiting. Did I mention the waiting? The ups an downs of watching your work being judged. Every year I say why do we do it?!

But its the learning, the professional development, seeing your work judged by your fellow professional photographers (not just your mum, who loves everything you photograph!). And the FOMO – judging week isn’t anywhere near as exciting is you have any work in!

This year the awards were run a bit differently – all of the judging was done online and there were no prints to send in. I have to admit, as stressful as it can be, I always love seeing the work printed, as you can really add another layer to the storytelling through how you print and what papers you choose to use. There was also no limit of the number of images you could enter and no time frame as to when they had been photographed. Because of this I enter a few older images, that I couldn’t enter before because of the limit on entry numbers.

I was thrilled to come away with 3 silver awards and 9 bronzes!

Here are my silvers –

The first image was entered into the Documentary Category is very special to me as its a story of my boys and their days playing rugby together. They worked and played hard and there were a few injuries along the way!

My second silver was in the Portrait Open category and is personal work from a series I photographed and entered last year. Its always very exciting/nerve-wracking and slightly weird when judges get exactly what you are trying to say. Watching this being judged was a bit of a woah moment – like I had given too much away. Everyone has their own view on an image and what it says to them.

My last silver was in the Creative Category. It was my first time entering this category and again, was personal work and very different from what I normally do. This field was photographed from plane and repeated to make this image. I have always been fascinated at seeing the marks we leave on the earth from above, how we organise ourselves into these activities and patterns that can seen from above. Fields have always reminded me of giant patchwork covering the land.

The other images are my bronzes entered into a mixture of Documentary, Wedding In Camera, Portrait Open, Family and Creative.

The first image was entered into the Portrait Open category which is basically full reign in terns of post-production/Photoshop. This is Hayden, who is locally based Copywriter who was looking for a new head-shot image for his website. I was pretty blemming happy to get a bronze award for an image from a head-shot session in this category!

The next two images were entered into the family category, which again are open in terms of post-production/Photoshop. Both images are from clients who I have photographed many times over the years, so its always lovely to see my everyday client work awarded.

The next two images were entered into the Wedding In Camera Category which means there is a limited amount of post-production allowed. I find this category is always a tough one – lots of amazing wedding images entered in here!

These few images were entered into the creative category (a new category for me), so this is all personal work. I was pretty happy that these all got awarded! The first image is a series of free lensing of succulents and flax seed pods in the frost.