What's a Licentiateship???

I've had such a lovely response from so many people about my award and I can't thank you all enough for your positive comments and genuine happiness for me... but... I know a few of you are a tad confused about what I won the award for. It's way to complicated to explain in 140 characters so hopefully this will make some sense of it for you.

I'm a member of the British Institue of Professional Photography (BIPP) and they have a qualification system. The levels are Affiliate, Licentiate, Associate and Fellow. When I joined the BIPP last year they said I didn't have to qualify for Affiliate, that they recognised my photography as being of a high enough standard to start as an Affliate and that I could head towards my Licentiateship straight away.

I had to submit 20 images including a working profile that explained:

-What the images were taken for and how I achieved the end result (technically).

-A personal statement about me and my photography and what I'm working towards.

-My photography insurance certificate, proof of professional indemnity and my CV.

-And supporting evidence (basically proof of published work and commissions).

Click on the below jpg for the panel of images I submitted...

All of the high res images and required information goes to a panel of judges who discuss the work and the images separately, it gets marked and then that determines whether or not you get awarded your qualification. I was awarded my Licentiateship earlier this year, yeahhh!!

BUT what I hadn't realised was that they had chosen my panel of images to go forward to be nominated for the Best Licentiateship Panel 2010. On the evening of the awards, held at Blenheim Palace in Oxford, we were told that 100 people were awarded their Licentiateship this year, that five people had gone forward to be nominated for the Best Panel award and... that I was the winner!!!!

... phew... does that make sense now?

I'm so pleased to have won, and so surprised... those that know Tom, he'll tell you if you ask, I nearly fell off my chair! I had some inspirational conversations with some of the photographers that were there and they were so complimentary about my work, it's motivated me like nothing else and that's such a great feeling.

My plan is to start working towards my Associateship, and I'm really looking forward to being assigned a BIPP mentor that is going to push me and my images as hard as possible to get the best out of myself. I'm also hoping the process will push my photography into a particular style and that based on that style I'll get booked for lots of the shoots that I really love doing.

So there you have it, that's what a Licentiateship is and that's what I won my award for. Thanks for all of your comments and support and I can't wait to get the Associateship ball rolling...

H x

Busy bee...

"If you need something doing, give it to someone busy"... isn't that how the saying goes?

This month has been crazy... brilliant, but crazy!

Earlier in the year I was commissioned to shoot the cover image for a great book, Britain and the Olympic Games - Past, Present & Legacy, which was launched last Tuesday in London. Matt Rogan and his Dad Martin (the authors) weren't quite sure what they wanted to have as the front cover. The nice thing about this commission though was that Matt already loved my work and trusted me and my ideas. We worked together to come up with what we thought would be the perfect image for his first ever book.

I shot it on the track at Leeds Metropolitan University armed with a British flag and a plethora of ideas, none of which I was sure would work! I'd asked my good friend Sarah if she thought her son Joe would like to be the model, he's got such a great face and he's also an aspiring and talented athlete, I knew he would be perfect. The hardest thing was trying to keep an element of childish hope, talent and Britishness yet not really show Joe's face as he needed to be anonymous to stop people wondering who he was. We also wanted to age the picture to maintain the sense of the past yet keep the colour in the flag to represent the present, with Joe representing the legacy.

The launch on Tuesday went brilliantly and it was great to meet the publishers as well as hang out with Matt & Martin Rogan. The book looks great (available on Amazon if you fancy a read) and I'm proud to have shot the cover. Matt loved so many of the images Joe & I created that day on Carnegie track that he asked for five of them to be printed on blocks (see below). I found some motivational sports quotes and added them to the images and Matt auctioned them, raising £1500 for the Meningitis Trust. Hope you like them...

So... what else have I been up to...

Well, if you take a look at the portfolio section of my website you'll see I've finally got round to updating a lot of the images on it. It's one of those tasks that I put off and put off but I'm pleased I've done it.

I've just shot another front cover for TVTimes with Lorraine Kelly and was really pleased to be commissioned to shoot Theo Paphitis, for the BBC. I'll tell you all about him in my next blog. I've just spent two days in Manchester Children's Hospital for ITV's series 2 of the programme and tomorrow I'll be photographing ballet dancers just before they go on stage. My job is anything but boring, I absolutely love it. I'm also really excited to see if I'll be lucky enough to be commissioned for a tv project that will take me over the pond to the US of A with a celebrity...fingers crossed!! And of course I'm still shooting my daily picture via iPhone, a habit I don't think I'll ever stop.

Happy snapping!

H :0)