My Name is Christine and I’m a Print Competition Addict

Oh hello! Yes, the truth is out, I’m addicted to Print Competition. I write about it, I talk about it, I design speaking gigs about it and I schedule my vacations around it. If you consider annual convention print room setup days as “vacation,” like me, I’m here to tell you you’re addicted, too.

When I was born a photographer, I immediately began to notice that those photographer guru gods wore cool necklaces. Kind of like Jerry beads, only you don’t have to bare any anatomy to get them. That I’m aware of.

After awhile, I learned that these were medallions and signified the completion of certain requirements, one of which is the Master of Photography Degree medallion and is earned by participating in print competition (among other requirements).

Competition. What a word. A word I’m familiar with, a word that inspires me. A word that says “hey you, here’s a goal, I dare you to try!”

Sidebar #1: Once upon a time I went to a Mary Kay cosmetic meeting where they tried to get me to invest $99 in a makeup kit and become a rep. I didn’t care about the makeup. I cared about the PRIZES they gave you for certain level of achievements. Let’s just say, if I cared one whit about makeup, I’d be driving a pink Cadillac to this day. Yet, I digress.

So, here we are, with the PPA white glove thrown solidly down. A goal. One that was going to be hard to accomplish, but I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed newbie squirrel and decided to do it.

Sidebar #2: In all of my newbie wisdom, I put “Master of Photography Degree” on my 5 year goal list. Go ahead, we’ll take a little Keurig break while you laugh… I not only put it on my goal list, I put it on an application for a photography scholarship. True story. I applied to the PP of Ohio for a scholarship and in the area where you are supposed to list your photography goals, I listed my 5 year goal of being a Master. To make this story more interesting (nice word for “ridiculous’), I had not yet entered ANY print competitions…

Woah, watch it there, hot coffee snorted through your nose is painful.

To make a long story short, I won the scholarship. And I earned the Master’s in THREE years. (Pause for applause. Bow.)

How? How in the heck did that happen? Let’s just say I ate, breathed and slept print competition for the entire three years. Every conference and convention that had a print competition found me either volunteering in the print room or with my butt solidly planted in a seat in the judging room. For hours and hours and hours. And hours. No lie.

And it was THE. BEST. EDUCATION.EVER.

I knew NOTHING about print competition. I read everything I could find and talked to as many people as I could. I soon learned to recognize the yellow ribbon that held the Master medallion around photographers’ necks and would beeline to talk to those who obviously had met the challenge I wanted so desperately to achieve. Aside from the process of earning the CPP (Certified Professional Photographer) designation, earning the Master’s Degree was the journey that made me the photographer I am today. I developed a style. I began to approach every client session as an opportunity to create a merit image. I began to demand perfection from myself and developed the ability to shake off the emotion I felt about an image and review it critically and objectively.

I picked my lab, based first on how quickly they could get the images back to me (yes, I am a huge procrastinator), and then later, by running tests on papers, finishes and laminations until I found a lab who enhanced my photography style.

Sidebar #3: Buckeye Professional Imaging is getting my black and white competition work. Their deep matte paper in black and white with leather lamination is TO.DIE.FOR. It works well with the kind of work that I specialize in and I’m not willing to trust that to just any old lab that does competition prints. I love that Bill at Buckeye has plenty of competition image printing experience and is available to make sure that my print is done according to my wishes.

And finally, I’m there. But it’s not over. The addiction is in full force and now I am luring others into its clutches.

True story. I have a new intern, named Amber (Hello Amber!) and she has joined my state organization and is attending her first convention next week. Unfortunately, she is attending on a day of judging, when no classes are being conducted. This works great as I have encouraged her to spend the day in the judging room. She hasn’t yet figured out that I’m her “dealer” and her day will consist of 9 hours of judging and two hurridly-grabbed meals. Welcome to print competition, Amber, bring a pillow. 😉

What are the signs of this affliction with no known cure?

In Wootness style, here we go:

• If you’ve ever considered whether a print case would make a briefcase, you might be a print competition addict.
• If you choose your lab based on whether they use Fuji or Kodak, you might be a print competition addict.
• If your convention packing includes a pillow to sit on in the judging room, you might be a print competition addict.
• If start referring to other photographers as “the maker,” you might be a print competition addict.
• If you have a pixel width preference for a stroke, and know what this means, you might be a print competition addict.
• If you spend the last 3 days before the entry deadline pulling all-nighters, you might be a print competition addict.
• If you know your combined score of last year’s case without looking it up, you might be a print competition addict.
• If you’ve entered digitally because you didn’t have time to have your images printed, you might be a print competition addict.
• If you look at an image and say “it’s been done” and you’re at an art museum, you might be a print competition addict.
• if last year’s vacations were allotted to your state and district conventions, you might be a print competition addict.
• If the number “79” makes you cry, you might be a print competition addict.

We don’t have meetings. Or coffee. Or candy. We don’t say the Serenity prayer every time we meet and we certainly aren’t trying to escape the addiction, although I’ve heard many pleas to God during judging and exclamations of despair over the time and money spent on competition (usually uttered by someone who didn’t score as well as they had hoped), but I’m betting that you won’t find anyone that tells you that being involved in print competition is a bad idea & you should quit.

As a matter of fact, we’ll encourage you to read “The 12 Elements of a Merit Print.” That’s our idea of a 12 step program.

Call me, I’ll hook you up. 😉