What is the International Photographic Competition?
The International Photographic Competition is a yearly event sponsored and judged by the Professional Photographers Association of America (PPA). It is one of the largest and oldest competitions of it’s kind and regularly draws more than 5000 entries. These entries are judged in two separate competitions: Photographic Open and Artist. Artist is a “Photoshop” competition. It’s really about evaluating and judging a persons ability to create graphic art from photographs. Photographic Open is for everything else.
Photographic open has many categories, including “Wedding and Event.” This is the category that I primarily compete in.
Images are scored on a scale from 70-100 by a panel of 5 judges. Becoming a judge is a long process, literally years. I wrote more about judging here..
You may only enter 4 images each year. If an image receives an average score above 80 from the judges you receive a “merit.” Once you have received 13 merits (as well as 12 merits awarded for service to the PPA or teaching) you become a Master Photographer. I became a “Master” last year.
The Wedding Photography Degree
This year we added a new degree: The Wedding Photography Degree. I wrote about the new degree here but here’s a quote from the article:
“I have entered 4 images. I predict that 2 will merit. I believe that they all should merit based on what I’ve just said but I’m not going to get my hopes up. It will take several years before we really get the judging dialed in on a new degree. If they all merit I’ll feel pretty good about the new degree. If 2 merit I’ll feel like maybe it’s better but time will tell. If less than 2 merit I’ll be worried for the future, unless the overall merit count makes sense in which case I’ll just know that I suck. “
Well, the judging is over and I’m pleased to say that I merited all 4 images. The images are below:
