I have vowed to become more active in my local community of photographers and have found a happy home at the Tallahassee Professional Photographers Guild!  I had visited a few times over the last few years but am now a proud member!  We attend monthly meetings to hang out, discuss the latest happenings, usually enjoy a guest presentation, eat some yummy food, and enter prints for monthly competitions.  This month I entered 4 images into various categories, and 3 of them won for Best in Category!  One of my boudoir pictures won for Portrait of a Woman and also:

This image from Jennifer and Anton’s wedding won for “Social Function”:

and this image from the Ciotola family’s portrait session in Hawaii won for Best Environmental Photograph:

We also got to meet and hear from Carrie Viohl from Studio Viohl up in Moultrie, GA!  She was super cute and had lots of good information for blogging and keeping up with your business in this viral market.  (she also really loved the above family portrait and said a lot of sweet things about my work, so flattering!)  I went to school for photography and went through weekly critiques (that were NOT warm and fuzzy, think Simon from American Idol) so you’d think I’d be used to hearing criticism about my work.  But as the votes were counted and the winning images picked out, my heart seriously plunked into my stomach!  I know….silly, right?  But even with just an informal voting amongst peers, I still wanted to know that everyone loved my pictures and couldn’t find a darn thing wrong with them!  We were able to find some technical things that needed some work, but overall I felt really great about the experience and am looking forward to doing it again soon!

Come back tomorrow, I’ve got a cute “Things I Love” Thursday post in the works!