I’m delighted to have received notification this week that my application for the EFIAP Silver (EFIAP/s) award has been successful; this makes it my fourth FIAP distinction in consecutive years which I feel is a good achievement.

As with my other blog posts about the FIAP distinction trail,  EFIAP2013 and EFIAP/b 2014), I will share all the images that gained me acceptances for my successful EFIAP Silver application below this text.

I have been entering FIAP salons now for the last 5 years and over that period have had success with gaining acceptances and a few awards too. Through pursuing the FIAP salons trail I seen inspiring work, I have met a lot of good photographer and made some new friends and travelled internationally as both a judge and an award winner. The salons have provided me with an outlet for my work to be seen and shown internationally.

However from 2016 FIAP have decided to introduce an increase to all the level requirements, effectively a 100% increase in the numbers required at each level. This suddenly makes this a very expensive task and perhaps not worth the effort as future increase could again be made in following years.

Now I have seen the acceptance requirement increase at EFIAP level and was fortunate to have been successful enough with my images to gain sufficient acceptances to meet that increase. FIAP then decided to delay the introduction of that increase which then meant that I had a large number of acceptances that could not be used. However it seems that they may come into play with new changes to the requirements that FIAP have introduced as you can now include all your acceptances from your AFIAP and EFIAP towards these new level requirements.

So will I continue on the distinction trial?   I will wait and see as if those images are now able to count, if that is the case, then the task is not as great as it would have been. So clarification will be required before I make any decision on progressing on to EFIAP/Gold. I know that I will certainly not be going on from there.

I do feel a certain amount of regret that changes he been made without any consideration for people already within the process. Most other organisation would have taken a phased in approach to the changes, to allow for many of the members who were already well through the process to complete it, but that is not the case. This is a shame, as I feel I can no longer recommend the FIAP distinctions process as worth having a go at, which I used to do in my lecture tours.

Above are the a few of the award winning images:

Portrait Photography - Portrait Photographer - colour portrait image of model with deep blue eyes
Richard Spurdens Photography – EFIAP Gold – Nordic Blue eyes
Dance Photography - Dance Photographer - red pointe expression
Richard Spurdens Photography – Red pointe expression
dance photography - dance photographer - kapow
Richard Spurdens Photography – Kapow
Fine Art Nude Photography - Fine Art Nude Photographer - monochrome image of artistic nude model making shapes with a set of gossamer wings
Richard Spurdens Photography – Gossamer Wings in Mono

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