I went into 2016 with my main goal of progressing and improving my photography. I have owned a DSLR for several years now, but in all honesty I have never really taken photography very seriously before 2015 when I started to become addicted to several genre's of photography including macro and landscape.
In 2016 I found myself concentrating more on landscape, and in particular long exposure mono or muted colour seascapes. Now while I'm happy with my progression in this particular style of photography I still have much to learn and there are many places I want to shoot.
TWISTED - First place WPOTY
TWITTER
in May I decided to re-open my Twitter account as I had heard various people talk about the great community of photographers, that I could hopefully draw inspiration and learn from. Theres no doubt about it there are some wonderful photographers on Twitter, and I will hopefully be doing another blog soon with my top 10 images from Twitter togs. If you are a keen photographer, the best advice I can offer you is get on Twitter and join in the fun!
WEX PHOTOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHIER OF THE YEAR
WPOTY is a popular weekly photographic competition run by Wex Photographic on Twitter. Each Monday hundreds of photographers (sometimes up to 400) enter the competition by submitting a shot from the previous week with the hashtag #wexmondays. All these entries are then judged by wex and then they choose a shortlist of 10 from which a top 3 are announced! The top 3 placed entries each week then receive points which contribute to the overall standings in the comp (1st 50pts . 2nd 20pts . 3rd 10pts).
I started WPOTY in May, and to be honest I didn't really believe I could do well having seen the standard of entries on show, my main aim was to get a top three entry before the end of the comp!
Well its safe to say I surpassed my early expectations by some margin, racking up a total of 310pts including 4 winning images and eventually winning the competition. This really was something I didn't believe to be possible to achieve, I still feel like I'm just at the start of my photography journey with so much to learn and improve on.
You can read my Wex interview here: www.wexphotographic.com
EIGHT - First place WPOTY
ABYSS - First place WPOTY
GALACTIC - First place WPOTY
2016 Achievements
Winning WPOTY really did top off a great year for me, here are some of my other achievements I am also very proud of:
WEX PHOTOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR - Winner
OUTDOOR PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR - 2 Commended images
MANOR MAGAZINE - 12 page featured photographer (Dreamscapes)
WEX PHOTOGRAPHIC - Article (Long exposure minimalism)
PHOTOGRAPHY WEEKLY - Various publicised images