Portrait Masters Awards

This week I received the results of my first ever submission to the Sue Bryce Education – Portrait Masters competition for January 2021. Before I get to my results, a word about why I felt I should pursue yet another international awards and distinction journey. I have been entering national and international photographic competitions since around 2009 when I received my first Licentiate Distinction with the Irish Photographic Federation (IPF), and also had one of my images submitted by our club to the FIAP World Cup when Celbridge Camera Club placed 3rd in the World in 2010! I also entered my works to a FIAP salon around this time and received zero acceptances, which really deflated my motivation. I struggled for a while to bring my work to the next level and it wasn’t until 2014 I started attending workshops and finally felt my work was good enough to submit to international FIAP salons again. This time around I received acceptances and soon also began to received FIAP and PSA or Salon awards. Shortly afterwards I gained a FIAP Associate distinction (AFIAP), and Associate AIPF distinction with the IPF as well.

AIPF – Associate Panel, IPF

It’s hard to appreciate the significant jumps in skill levels and bodies of worked required in national or international distinctions from level to level before going through the process. At times it seems like a slog and often an expensive egotistical indulgence. I continued to pursue my photographic artistic outlet fairly intensely for the next few years and by 2018 had achieved the highest level national IPF distinction of Fellow (FIPF), as well as achieving EFIAP-Bronze with the FIAP salons work. In the back of my mind was always the notion that I should someday be able to make money out of my art/craft. I even organized to exhibit my work in California and Ireland with a small amount of interest. Ultimately I knew there was much more to being commercially successful than being good at the craft of photography, and that is where I was stuck in my thinking.

“A sense of place” – Fellowship Panel for the IPF

I have been an admirer of Sue Bryce’s work, career trajectory, and also her wonderful insight into the art and craft of being successful in business. Her honest and practical approach to work and ability to communicate and inspire so many photographers all over the world captured my interest to really examine my own motivation and goals for photography. I have watched the Portrait Masters competitions become an amazing collection of contemporary photographers revealing their latest and greatest works of art to the world, receiving recognition at the highest commercial standards.

So this year, as I finalized my submission to yet another FIAP distinction – EFIAP-Silver, I considered my motivation and future direction with photography. FIAP is about to once again change the goal posts for distinction levels and associated costs in achieving each. My interest long term is to pursue commercial portrait photography, so perhaps it’s time to see how my work stacks up against this pool of international photographers. Without going into the details of the Portrait Masters award too much, it is a dual competition with awards and also a points system towards distinctions – Associate, Master, Fellow. I was interested to see how long it might take me to reach Associate based on my current work and how well it would be received. So in January I submitted 10 images to a number of categories from Contemporary Portrait, Creative Portrait, Movement, and Boudoir.

The results are in… I received 10 awards for 10 images, 8 Bronze with Distinction and 2 Bronze awards. Sorry for the suspense!

So what does this mean for Distinctions? Well each bronze award is worth 1/2 a point towards the 25 points needed to achieve Associate Portrait Master distinction. So on that basis I received 5 points and am now 20% along the way to achieve Associate level.

What does it cost?

Compared to FIAP this may seem expensive, but let me explain why it’s probably not… Each image submission costs $20 USD. So I paid $200 to acheive 20% of Associate distinction. FIAP salons cost $20..$45 USD depending on categories and salon. I entered 14 salons in the past 9 months to attain the required acceptances and awards for the current EFIAP Silver accreditation. A quick check of my paypal account I see 11 of these cost €315 or $375 USD. So perhaps I spent $450 total on salon submissions for EFIAP Silver. Application fee for EFIAP Silver handling by the IPF liaison officer is also a charge of €75 or $90. So budget for a distinction is currently north of $500 USD. FIAP also recently announced changes to distinction rules and this will essentially result is photographers needing to enter double the number of salons and consequently paying twice the price for each Distinction accreditation ~ $1000 by my rough calculations above. This obviously excludes all the costs associated with creating the images in the first place, most of which are by amateur photographers receiving zero funding for their work product.

So based on this numbers exercise and my experiment with Portrait Masters awards, if I can up my game and keep entering and receiving awards at least as well as I have this month, I would achieve Associate Portrait Master after spending $1000. So I am not a commercial photographer (yet), and I did say this is all an indulgence for me (keeps me sane), so I can hardly justify pursuing two separate distinction journeys at this point, can I?

Let’s wait and see…

Until then please take a look at my awarded images, and let me know what you think. Also checkout the Portrait Masters Gallery as this will give you an idea of the inspiring work I would be happy to emulate in the future.