Yesterday was a truly exciting day here at Made Portraits. After months of messing about with the idea of attempting to achieve my Craftsman status from the Guild, I finally did something about it and submitted a panel.
The Guild of Photographers is a truly fantastic national Photographic society that are there to support their members and help them improve. Steve and Lesley who run the Guild really do care about all their members and want to see photographers push themselves to be better. There are also a panel of Guild Members whom are all at the top of their game and they to are incredibly supportive when you need them.
Thanks to one Panel Member in particular (The lovely Julie Oswin), I took the plunge and submitted my panel for judging yesterday. This was tough to do as I really hate to fail so there was a real fear of not being good enough.
The Craftsman status is as you would imagine, aligned to the exacting standards of a true guild ‘Craftsman’. The judging panel are incredibly ‘fussy’ and look in minutiae at all the elements of photographic understanding. Those that achieve the ‘Craftsman’ accolade do so by demonstrating the finest technical skills and an exceptional creative and artistic ‘eye’.
The panel submitted involved me sending in 36 digital images (3 images from each of 12 sessions) which needed to be varied enough for me to demonstrate that I am a true ‘Craftsman’ in the art of photography and my chosen genre.
12 of the images must then also be presented as mounted prints in a way representative of the work clients receive from the studio when buying images. I also had to provide a short purposeful written brief to assist the evaluation of my submission.
The judging panel obviously go through these images with a fine tooth comb to ensure the quality is absolutely in keeping with the standards they hold upon the Craftsman status and I’m delighted to say that they felt that I did exactly that.
After nervously waiting for the entire day, Julie Oswin rang me late afternoon to let me know that I had passed and I was absolutely over the moon. Needless to say my wife and I opened up a bottle of Prosecco to celebrate this as it’s been a labour of love getting it done.
I am truly grateful to all the people that helped me along the way with advice and direction and also to all my clients that trust me and my imagination when they come in for their shoots.
So it’s official… I am now Neil Bremner CrGPP (Crafsman of the Guild of Photographers)
Below is a small selection of the 36 images that were submitted.
