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Team Stories

What’s Been Going On! – May 2020

A montage of 13 black and white classical images, that were all part of our photographers Associate panel

Georgina and I have spent so much time running Blitz in the past 7 years, we have very little time for anything else other than spend a few precious days with our two beautiful children. So the lockdown has presented us with the time and opportunity to do some things that have got put on the back burner. One of those items on my to-do list was to demonstrate my photographic ability by achieve the next level of qualification within my professional associations, The Master Photographers Association, The Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers and The Guild of Photographers.

There are three tiers of qualification in each association which are Licentiate, Associate and Fellowship ( The Guild call the levels Qualified, Craftsman and Master Craftsman). The first step has an emphasis on technical ability and the last an emphasis on artistic excellence. The second step (Associate) places equal value on both and must be demonstrated in a panel of 20 photographs showing a unique photographic style.

I have been a licentiate in the MPA for the last 5 years and qualified with the SWPP and The Guild after joining them in the past year. However, creating a unique style that will impress a panel of top photographic judges at this level is no easy task. A hair out of place or a hand posed slightly in the wrong way can become a fatal error. Just a handful of mistakes can drop enough points to fall below the required standard. At Blitz we work for our customers and there isn’t enough time to prepare a themed portfolio for a panel of judges.

In January this year we ran a model call because I wanted to develop a new style of classical child portraits and needed to experiment, as well as create images for a promotional campaign. The results were so good we won a number of awards. I also had a large reservoir of high quality images which sat next to each other as a “unique photographic style”.

Then came the lockdown. There was no point in running the promotion so I decided to look more closely and the portraits I had taken. I selected 15 from January and 5 more from last summers Child Portraits Awards (CPA) sessions, then re-edited them in black and white. The results were stunning!

The panel was submitted and within days I had a call from the Chairman of judging telling me I’d scored 368 from 400 points and was now an Associate of the MPA. Our family and our customers have priority in normal times and I would not of had time to prepare these images had it not been for the lockdown. However, I’d be lying if I said I’m not chuffed to bits to be recognised as an associate by my peers.

A big thank you to all our customers who have made it possible. Steve

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