I received the first email announcing the categories for the 2018 VOICE weeks ago. I don’t believe I have ever entered a photography competition before. I don’t know what pushing myself to enter will accomplish, except that I hope it will push me to continue to develop as an artist. There are so many incredible pros out there, if I am being honest, it’s intimidating.
There were several categories, in this particular competition, that you could enter your photos into, including beautiful light, color, movement, love & connection . . . But the category that was calling me was the project that I was dedicating my personal photography to this summer – self portraits. I spend day in and day out at home with my boys and yet, until this summer, I didn’t tend to be in very many pictures with them. As a photographer, I always seem to have my camera handy, to snap the moments that I watch unfold, so I have a million (and a half) photos of my boys. But it takes a little extra effort to set up that tripod, to put the camera on an interval timer, get my settings right, take one round of photos and then get up to check and be sure that we’re all in focus, that my settings were all okay and then take two or three more rounds of photos. This also creates an abundance of photos to go through, hundreds of them, of which maybe one or two are really keepers.
And so, with all of that effort, I’m pretty proud that I’ve come out of this with a few self portraits that I love. I don’t know that they will win awards, but they are a good representation of the love and connection that I share with the two toddlers that I spend my days with. I found it extremely hard to be on both sides of the camera, so I’m proud of the outcome. And I’m proud that I got the courage up to submit them for judging, (even if I did wait until the very last minute to do it!)
