good results in imaging competition part deux

Yesterday I shared the images I entered at the Arizona Professional Photographers Association annual convention. Today I’ll show the awards I received as part of the competition and talk about the marketing value for business.

arizona professional photographers association awards bob coates 2015
Emil Eger Photographer of the Year Award for high scoring print case (341 out of 400)
First Place in Masters Portrait, Commercial and Illustrative categories.
American Society of Photographers Award for High scoring image by an ASP member.
AZPPA Top Ten Award for the 15th time in 16 years

OK Bob, big deal, how can this be used in marketing?

I am excited to have earned these designations and will proudly display them in my studio. This is for marketing purposes and what I call a ‘stick’ for when clients walk through the door to be photographed. When people make decisions to spend money they ALWAYS want to be reassured that they have made a good choice on where they’ve decided to spend their hard earned dollars. Seeing the awards gives people more confidence in my skills. Almost everyone comments on my award case… in a good way. Thus they will ‘stick’ with me because of the positive reinforcement of seeing the awards.

Tomorrow I’ll follow up on the next step in making the winning of awards really pay when we chat about press releases.

By the way, as an aside for people who are still on the fence about the quality of Lumix cameras and the micro 4/3rds format… Four of the six images were captured with my Panasonic gear and they scored the highest of my entries.

Yours in Creative Photography,       Bob

competition images slideshow

Was taking a cruise through some of my competition images through the years and it was very interesting to find I had a style when I reviewed the images as a body of work verses seeing them individually. I’ve found that competing at the Professional Photographers of America level has done more to improve my photography than almost anything else. Now with a little review from you I’d like to learn more.

This question came up on a PPA forum, “What is your style?”

It was actually difficult to answer… So here’s a pile of pictures, so to speak, and I’m going to ask you to take a few minutes and share with me your ideas of what my style is… Thanks in advance for your feedback!

I put these images together in slideshow format with ProShow Web. I’ve only just started using it but I’m really liking the interface. Upload the images and it does most of the heavy lifting of building the slideshow by you picking a template that you want to use. You can upload your own music if you have permission too. Cool part is you can watch what it turns out and then go back in and edit it. Very cool! (there’s no video in here but it takes vid clips too!)

These images were gathered from approximately 2005 to present from my digital competition files from
Arizona PPA, Professional Photographers of America and others….
Thanks again for your help.
Yours in Creative Photography,     Bob