Awards Archives - Richard Spurdens Photography

2017 a year in review

So as 2017 comes to an end I thought it was worth taking a bit of time to reflect on this years photography.

Two of the main highlights from 2017 that spring to mind are being awarded a third London Salon medal for one of my images entered in this years (2017) London salon. Having been lucky enough to have been awarded medals at medal at previous Salons – I never thought I would get a third.

The second highlight was having an image in Great Britain entry for this years FIAP colour biennial .
I also achieved the EFIAP/Platiumn award which has been a long-term goal for me. (see below).

2015 – a review of the year

So here we are at the end of 2015 and a time to reflect on the year photographically.

Has 2015 been a good year?

The answer, I think is yes, it has been a good and varied year.

Trierenberg Super Circuit 2015

Following on from my success in the 2014 Trierenberg Super Circuit I went to the Gala Dinner to collect my medal and it was a great night of photography images and meeting fellow award winners. I again entered the 2015 Trierenberg Super Circuit and I was more than delighted to be a medal winner again in 2015.

The Trierenberg Super Circuit gala dinner and awards evening

Part of the introduction on the Trierenberg Super Circuit website states that:

“It is the aim of this competition to find out the very best photography from different styles, techniques and genres. The Trierenberg Super Circuit has established as an international benchmark of perfect photography. Not only amateur photographers, but also internationally well-known artists and professionals have been participating.”

And on Monday of this week (13/10/2014) I was among those photographers at the gala dinner and awards evening held at the Design Centre in Linz, Austria. One of my 8 accepted images had been awarded a gold medal for best colourprint image in the Feldkirch salon. (Expression on red Pointe).

Red point angles and shapes

As medal winner you get an invite to attend the Gala Dinner and awards evening, and as I have known other UK and Irish photographers, (Ron and Maggie Tear and Ciaran Whyte) to name but two, who have attended in the past and talked about the event being impressive, so when the invitation came I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to attend.

I was not disappointed as it was certainly an impressive event, well organised and with a well curated exhibition of a large number of the accepted prints. To have one of your images on display with all the other impressive work and to stand on the stage in front of all those other photographers and creative artists was a good and humbling feeling.

There were a few other UK photographers attending too – Tim Pile and Brian Hooper were two whose work I know.

They were also there to collect medals for their work so it was good to meet up with them and also spend time with photographers from around the world, the furthest being one from Australia and the other from Brazil.

Thanks to Brian Hooper for the the next two images, which are me collecting my medal; and the other guests on our table (myself and Ro, Lotta van Droom and partner, Brian Hooper, Jalal Sazeli and Jack).

Then we have Tim Pile been interviewed on stage.

Collection my award

Some of the other award winners

Tim on camera

Three photographers who I met at the event and whose work is worth looking at are :

Lotta van Droom (Ireland),

Jalal Sazeli from Singapore, and

Mohammadreza Rezinia from Iran is also an impressive creative and it was good to meet and talk with him about the challenges he faces in creating his work.

Have a look at their websites if you have the time.

To sum up the Gala evening – it is just amazing. The presentation of the images, awards, and company made it a special event, and if you ever get the invite, then GO.

Yorkshire Photographic Union (YPU) Annual Exhibition 2014

A little later than I wanted to blog about this but I have had a busy few weeks since the assemble and opening of this exhibition.
If you are in the Yorkshire area and a club photographer, then the Yorkshire Photographic Union’s (YPU) annual exhibition is the show case for the work from Yorkshire photographers. The Annual Exhibition is the place to be on the opening morning as you get a chance to see the work that has made it to the exhibition wall. This year it is being run by Halifax photographic society and is held in the Bankfield Museum in Halifax.
So how did I fare in this year’s Annual Exhibition? I knew I must have got a few acceptances as when I arrived a number of different people offered their congratulation, but that didn’t really prepare me for the results.
You are allowed to enter 6 prints and 6 digital images. I was certainly very successful with my print entry, as all 6 of my prints made it into the exhibition, certainly a very rare occurrence. I was also successful with 3 of my projected images being accepted into the digital presentation too. So that was another good result.
Having got six print images accepted, I was also delighted to find that three of them picked up Individual awards. Two monochrome prints were awarded trophies: Synchronised Bathing Practice –The Challenge Cup for best pictorial Print Monochrome; and Spotting a Square Landing – the Portrait Trophy for best Portrait or People study Print. In Colour prints general, my image entitled: ‘99 on the edge’ was awarded the Rotherham Trophy for the best sport, action or photojournalism Print.
The Challenge Cup winning image:

The Portrait Trophy winning image:

Spotting a square landing

The Rotherham Trophy winning image:

99 on the edge

I also received a number of certificates for the following images: Rainy day thoughts, In Contemplation, and Pillow Talk.

Rainy day thoughts

In contemplation

Pillow talk

Ilkley Camera Club also picked up two Society awards – The JE Barker trophy for colour prints and the Keighley Challenge trophy for monochrome prints, so we may well be going to represent the YPU in the PAGB Interclub Championship for 2014.
The exhibition runs until the 31st May 2014.

FIAP levels and the need to focus

From January to March anyone working towards the FIAP distinctions will have been finalizing their submissions and sending them off to their relevant FIAP coordinator. The Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB) who administer the FIAP scheme in for England have set the deadline date as 31/03/2014. I, like all the others on the FIAP trail, have submitted my form for the EFIAP/ bronze level, which I talked about in this post. To achieve this level you need 75 acceptances with 25 different Images and have gained 3 awards. As I could only count acceptances from June 2013 (the date of my EFIAP certificate) this was really halfway through the year so I was pleased to have achieved the required acceptance for this level in a relatively short timescale.

So what have been the learning points this year;

Focus

You need to be focused on getting new images into the salons and hopefully gaining acceptances; the important thing with the levels is to build up the number of different accepted images so you can achieve the required number for the level you working towards. It gives you no advantage in submitting previous images accepted, you are wasting your chances of getting other images accepted and building up your image count.

For the FIAP distinctions levels, you do need to have images that have gained awards. You need 3 for the bronze, 4 for the silver, 5 for the gold and 6 for the platinum – which is a total of 18 awarded images overall. Once an image has an award any further awards don’t help you, just the one is all that counts. So continuing to enter the same awarded image into other salons, in the hope of picking up any future awards is a real waste – these awards simply don’t count.

Strategy

The strategy I have adopted with new images is to enter them into at least 3 different salons and see if they gain acceptances. If they do gain an acceptance I then park it and move on to another image.

Learning

My main learning point this year was with image names. I used one image twice with different names and only discovered it as I was preparing my contact sheets. This is not acceptable and again a waste of time. I am not sure what I was doing but I guess entering Salons late at night after a long day at work had something today with it.

So I do need to improve my image numbering/naming system to ensure that images I use are numbered and named correctly to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

A few awarded images from my EFIAP/ bronze submission.

Black and white geometry to mood

In contemplation

Kapow

The 2013 FIAP trail

The 2013 FIAP trial

Overall it has not been a bad year for Salon entries and successes I could not really start my project of gaining the required acceptances for the FIAP/Bronze level until I had received confirmation of the EFIAP award. As you cannot count any acceptance towards the new level until after the confirmation date of the EFIAP award, which for me was confirmed at the beginning of June this year.

So for that reason I have not been entering as many salons this year as in the past few years, due to the reasons stated above. It is only after the award date that you can start to count acceptances towards your next level, so it was really a waste of images and money to do many entries. I did however support a few salons during that period and did gain a number of acceptances with a new range of images, but as I stated above none of these will count toward the bronze level.

That said there has been a few memorial highlights this year for me, the first high point was gaining acceptance of two images into the London Salon of Photography (2013) but the really highlight was that one of those images was awarded a prestigious London Salon Medal. This was a real surprise and a great achievement too.

These are prized medals as the London Salon only allows 10 medals to be available each year, and in some years only a few medals are award. So to actually be awarded one for your one of your images is really special and a great result. It was good to go down to London to the exhibition opening and receive the medal and see the images hug on the wall. I was fortunate this year to also get another image accepted into the exhibition.

Synchronized bathing practice

My second highlight of the year if you are allowed two, was in the Midlands Salon of photography were I was fortunate to win 4 different medals in the Salon.

The following images were medal winners.

Spotting a square landing was awarded PSA Gold Medal

Synchronised bathing Practice was awarded PSA Bronze Medal

Curves in profile was awarded UPI Silver Medal

Perfecting the art of table stands was awarded MCPF Medal

As they say, good things come in three and so finally and following my Blue badge win at the Exposed Salon in 2012. I was invited to be one of the judges for the 2013 Exposed Salon so a trip to Solvenia in the next couple of weeks is now arranged and I am looking forward to see and judging the images submitted into this year Salon.

So in terms of Salon this year I have entered 35 different Salons and had 204 acceptances and picked up the 24 awards, so not a bad half year really

Here are some of my new images that have gained acceptances in 2013.

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FIAP Awards

I started on the FIAP Distinction trail in 2010 and when I entered some images in the GB Small Print Championship and managed to gain a number of acceptances, I started to see if I could achieve my AFIAP. That became my project for 2011 and I have been submitting to salons on a regular basis ever since.

Thankfully I have been lucky enough to have my work feature amongst the awards in a number of salons, and so rather then keep posting in my blog I have put this gallery together which features my images that have received awards.

Received Awards

FIAP Blue Badge/Best Author (x1)	PSA Gold Medal (x4)
FIAP Gold Medal (x 2)	PSA Silver Medal (x2)
	PSA Bronze Medal (x2)
FIAP Bronze Medal (x2)	PSA Honorable Mention (x1)
FIAP Ribbon (x6)
FIAP Honourable Mention (x13)	London Salon Medal (x1)
UPI Gold Medal (x1)
UPA Silver Medal (x1)	Salon Medal (x6)
AFFR Gold Medal (x1)	Judges Medal (x2)
FFS Gold Medal (x1)
RPS Silver Medal (x1)	Salon Praise/Honorable Mention (x2)
RPS Ribbon (x1)

Awarded Images

Count

To date my count stands at 481 acceptances from 172 images, 74 salons from 23 countries & 35 awards from 21 different images

Distinctions

AFIAP- June 2012
EFIAP – June 2013

Good things come in Pairs

As I have mentioned in my previous blog post EFIAP Distinction Award, I enter images into international photographic exhibitions and with each salon there normally comes a catalogue (often a printed one, but some send a CD or DVD instead). These are usually records of the award winning images and a selection of the accepted images from the exhibition. Now it is good to get acceptances with your submitted images in the exhibitions but when you get awards too it is good to have a record of that fact.
I recently received two packages on the same day containing catalogues and medals from two different salons.
One was from Serbia – the Photo Cinema club “POZAREVAC” who run the Salon of Art Photography “WORLD AROUND US ” and the other was from Spain from the Spanish Andorran Iberoamerican digital circuit.

The first was a good printed catalogue, the other a CD.
In both of these salons my images had gained acceptances and in Spanish Circuit my image entitled, ‘In Contemplation’ had been awarded a Gold medal and one of my other images entitled ‘Kapow’ had gained a FIAP Ribbon.

In the World Around Us Salon, my image entitled ‘Rainy day thought’s had picked up a Silver Medal and had a full page spread which is always pleasing.

Kapow

Rainy day thoughts

In contemplation

So as the Chinese say ‘good things come in pairs’

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2017 a year in review

2015 – a review of the year

Trierenberg Super Circuit 2015

The Trierenberg Super Circuit gala dinner and awards evening

Yorkshire Photographic Union (YPU) Annual Exhibition 2014

FIAP levels and the need to focus

The 2013 FIAP trail

The 2013 FIAP trial

FIAP Awards

Received Awards

Awarded Images

Good things come in Pairs

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