00:00:00               Hey everybody, Nicole here from hair of the dog. And welcome back to the podcast. Today. We are going to be talking with Lisa ASP from Tangerine household design based in Minnesota. And you might know her as one of the masterminds behind the animal image makers conference. Well, today we are going to be demystifying print competition. And by the end,

00:00:19               I hope that you will be ready to throw your hat in the ring for the upcoming animal image makers print competition. That's April stay tuned. Welcome to the hair of the dog podcast. If you're a pet photographer, ready to make more money and start living a life by your design, you've come to the right place. And now your host, pet photographer,

00:00:41               travel addict, chocolate martini connoisseur, Nicole Begley. Hey everybody, Nicole here from hair of the dog. And I am here with Lisa ASP from Tangerine house of design. You also know her as the brain child behind aim animal image makers, which we'll be talking about that in a little bit as well. Welcome to the podcast, Lisa. I'm so happy to have you here.

00:01:02               Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be a part of it. Of course, of course. So, yeah, before we get started, why don't you just give everyone a little background on you? How long have you been in photography and you know, just a little bit about your journey? Sure. Yeah. I started my photography way back in college.

00:01:18               So I've been doing this for a long time. I'm one of those who got a part-time job while I was in college at a Sears portrait studio. That's kind of how I started with it. And then from there, you know, I, I felt very limited on creativity and all of that kind of stuff. It was a great way to learn how to work with people,

00:01:33               but left there and went to a private studio where I could be creative and do kind of whatever I wanted to, and then move to Michigan. That was in Minnesota. I grew up in Minnesota. I moved to Michigan when my husband went to grad school. So worked there for a couple of years and I was the director of photography at a large company that did events and large groups and graduations and that kind of stuff.

00:01:52               So I kind of oversaw the photography department there. And then after two years in Michigan, we went out to Connecticut and lived out there for 11 years and started out there working for a photography studio, husband and wife owned a small business. And after a few years, that's when I opened my business. So that was back in 2003. I opened my first studio.

00:02:12               And so I was there for eight years and then my husband was offered a job back in Minnesota. So we jumped at the chance to come back and be by friends and family and kind of come back to our roots. So 2011, I moved back to Minnesota and opened my studio and pet photography took off for me at that point. Up to that point,

00:02:29               I was doing a lot of families and kids and high school seniors and kind of everything, everything portrait related and did some pets as well. And that was one of those things that not a lot of people were doing in 2011. And it was one of those things. There are so many photographers in Minneapolis that I had to figure out what I wanted to do and what direction I wanted to go in because there was so much competition and nobody knew me.

00:02:50               I was opening a brand new business, so what could I do? And what did I do well that other people weren't, weren't doing. So it was easier for me to find clients. And for me that was pet photography. And yeah, I started doing sessions and working with some rescues and doing some fundraisers and it took off and ever since then,

00:03:06               I've been almost pet exclusive, so Awesome. That's awesome. Gosh, 2003. So when you started your business, can you believe that that's like, it's not that long ago, but it's, you know, in the world of, you know, pet photography and just photography businesses in general, you've seen a lot of changes in the industry for sure.

00:03:26               Yeah. Yeah. Huge changes. It's amazing. Yeah. You know, digital was, was just a thing when I, like, when I moved to Connecticut and I was working for another company, I had previously worked in labs and done some of that kind of stuff. So I had some of that knowledge, so they were just transitioning to digital and they decided to put their own lab in as well.

00:03:44               And so they bought this huge printer and they didn't know how to run it. And so I was running their lab and I was assisting in the studio and doing all sorts of stuff, which was fun. But yeah, I wanted more, I wanted, I wanted to do my own thing with it. And so, but yeah, you know, it was really funny because of course the camera is the digital cameras way back then were just awful.

00:04:04               They were amazing because it was digital. And like, you could do so much with it. And, but I look back now and even like my first digital camera, like, I don't know how I even printed a wall portrait with that thing, three megapixels, but yeah. You know, I've been working with Photoshop since, before they had layers of amicable,

00:04:23               like everything was done on one layer. And so it's, it's really been a whirlwind of changes since I have been a part of the industry. Yeah, my gosh. Have you seen it was the Photoshop where they gave like, you know, Joel Grimes, Ben shirk, amazing digital artists, like the very first op thing of Photoshop they're like here,

00:04:43               go ahead. And they're like, ah, wait, Very comical. Oh, awesome. That's fantastic. So, wow. Yeah. Congratulations on almost 20 years of rocking the photography industry. I love it today. We're going to talk a little bit about print competition and specifically the international print competition through PPA. So for those of you guys out there,

00:05:08               there's a lot of different print competitions. WPPI has one. I mean, there's various ones, all the rules are different. So today we're going to focus on the print competitions that are in the PPA network. So the IPC affiliates and things like that. So, so Lisa, when, when did you get involved with print competition? How did that start for you?

00:05:30               Oh boy. Gosh, I don't know. I don't remember. Honestly, when I got involved, it was when I was living in Connecticut and I joined the PPA affiliate out there, the Connecticut peanuts. And I think the first year or two, that I was a part of it. I didn't, you know, I didn't really know anything about print competition,

00:05:46               but you know, started seeing the print galleries, you know, you go to their conventions and they've got all the prints hanging there. And of course this is before digital or like when digital was just starting, but there were no digital competitions, everything was printed. And so it was really fun though, because you could walk through the print displays and you could see what people were doing.

00:06:02               And, and then the judges were all there too. So you could ask questions and it was so cool and it was such a learning opportunity. And so I'm like, all right, I cut some kick-ass images I'm going to enter. And of course, you know, your first year or two, you don't do so well, you don't think you're going to do well,

00:06:17               but you're really don't do so well. But you know, you got to start somewhere and you got to just jump in and go for it. And you learn so much through the process. And you know, again, when you're able to ask either the judges or people who've been in your shoes before in to know what they're talking about, what's going on and why your image didn't score as well as you thought,

00:06:35               or how come this, or how come that it's, it's such a great learning experience. And the more you do it, actually, the more you learn and the more you start pushing yourself to try new things and learn new things. And I think overall, you just become a better photographer, not just for competition, but for your clients as well.

00:06:50               And that's really ultimately the goal here is to be the best you can be to produce the best work that you can so that your clients get the absolute best. And you can attract new clients that way as well. Yeah. I agree. A hundred percent. I always like to say that creativity is something that, you know, if you feed it,

00:07:08               it grows. I used to consider myself not a creative person at all, and definitely much more linear minded, but the more that I, you know, got involved in pre-competition I started seeing some different things, trying some new things, and then it starts opening up new ideas. And I now have like a Trello board of all sorts of crazy print competition ideas.

00:07:27               Most of them I haven't actually done yet, but they're there. The ideas are there. I need to do them. That's a big, that's a big, first step is getting those ideas and having some inspiration because that's that doesn't come easy. It doesn't come easy for other people. So, yeah, And it, it didn't come easy for me,

00:07:43               but it was definitely one of those things where you start to do a little bit. And then all of a sudden you're like, Oh, this is not as hard as I was making out to be. I was building this up. Is this big, awful thing in my head? The other thing that I learned tremendously from pre-competition that has really improved my client work is just learning all sorts of new tricks of,

00:08:03               you know, like I am 100% confident I can go into any client session and no matter what is thrown at me with the lighting and the dogs and the behavior and really anything I can, I have the tools now to, to create that, even if it's, you know, Oh, this puppy won't stand by the older dog. Okay. Let's photograph that one separately and let's bring the puppy over here.

00:08:24               Now let's photograph those together and I'll just put it together and Photoshop. You don't want to say I'll do it in Photoshop, but it's nice to know we can if we need them. Absolutely. Yeah. And it's, I think it's so important to learn those skills. And, and like you said, not even just for print competition. Yeah. I mean,

00:08:40               I've, I've, I photographed dogs years ago while I was still in Connecticut who lived together in the same house, but they can never be in the same room because they, they fight. But the owners thought it would be a great idea to have the dogs photograph together. And I'm like, no, we're not doing, if they fight, if they're in the same room,

00:08:56               like, why would you think that's going to work both of them together? So yeah, photograph this together later. And that's the way that works. And you know what, they're, they're thrilled with the images that way, but it's one of those things that you've got to have the skills in order to do that. And you've got to do it well,

00:09:12               because if you don't do it well, it's not going to look good for your clients. And for sure, not for print competition and the judges can see all of those flaws, the judges are so well-trained that any flaws or any technical things they're going to pick up on it and your score is going to suffer as a result. So, yeah, it's a great way to learn those things and push yourself to learn more.

00:09:30               Absolutely. Yeah. Gosh, I can't even remember when I started either, I've done five, five IPCs I took a couple year break cause I just got busy. So it's what 20, 2020 must have been like 2013 that I had my did my first one in 2014, which just blows my mind. Yeah. It's been fantastic. I don't even remember how I got started or why necessarily I got started.

00:09:52               I think it was one of those things where it's like, Oh, I started to learn more about it. I didn't had joined. We didn't really have an affiliate near us. I was a member of our triangle PPA, like our Pittsburgh area PPA for a couple of years before it disbanded. But the PA one was based out of like more Eastern PA and it was kind of a pain pretty far for me to go for meetings and things like that.

00:10:13               So I didn't really do that. So I was like first straight into IPC. I did take a course. I had some wonderful mentors like Barbara Bright's meter and a couple other people that really helped me and gave me some feedback, which is, Oh my gosh. So important when you guys are getting started and print competition, reach out to people that are doing it.

00:10:30               And most of us are really happy to give you feedback because we've been in your shoes. Remember what it was like. And, and we, you know, the, the, The thing about print competition is you're not competing against each other. Like everyone's kind of competing against themselves. We want, we want to cheer our friends images on the other images.

00:10:49               So the more the merrier, which is just, you know, you know, just kind of a little, a little side note, similar to what you're just saying. If, for anybody who watched the grand imaging awards this year at the international print competition, which just wrapped up in January, you know, that there's an enemy. Congratulations Lee winning one of the grant imaging awards.

00:11:10               We can't have a talk about print company. Congratulations. Thanks. That was a total shock, But I'm not even going to that category. Talk about the animal portrait category. You know, they, they pick the top 10 images in the competition, which is super cool. And one of the things that I love so much about the animal CA the animal community,

00:11:27               that we're all a part of here is that it's really a very close knit community and everybody supports one another. And I love that the top 10 images are all, I was lucky enough to be one of the nominees in that every single image that was in there was made by somebody who I consider a friend, somebody I know personally, because I'm involved in the community.

00:11:43               And we don't like the 10 of us in a couple of other people actually had a zoom meeting going during the award ceremony, because we were so disappointed. We couldn't be on stage together as a group that, that our way of doing it this year since it was all virtual. And it was so much fun to be able to cheer one another on.

00:11:58               And I said to so many people, I don't really care who wins because it's going to be a friend of mine and that's the way it ended up. And that's one of the things that I love about this community. Yeah. I agree. A hundred percent. So, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about IPC of just, you know,

00:12:13               how it works. We talked about why people might want to do it, but maybe we can just give a really quick overview of just like what it is or the, you know, just the basics of how that, What it is actually a huge question will be a high level, because I think Explain all the nuances, this podcast could go on for like two hours.

00:12:36               Oh, no. High high level, right? Yeah. So there are different levels of competition through PPA and its affiliates. There's a, there's a local affiliates that are state affiliates. And then there are district and international and most people, I would say, when you're starting out with print competition, you want to probably start at either your local, your state level,

00:12:58               if you're a member of the affiliate and you should be a member of the affiliate, because there's so much great education and so much great networking going on through the affiliates all over. And especially this year, you know, with virtual, they're all having a tough time right now. So I think it's really important to support them. And then you get to be a part of that community as well.

00:13:15               And it's, it's much like our, our dog and animal community where we all support one another. It's the same thing in the affiliates. They're great people and definitely go out, but that'll give you the opportunity then to compete in their, in their competitions and, and be eligible for awards. Now, recently in recent years, you can compete in almost any competition.

00:13:33               You're just not typically eligible for awards, but that's great for feedback. So regardless, you can start at your local, you can start at your state level, and then you go on to the professional photographers of America level. And they've got typically each year, the last year was a little different. They've got a district competition in the spring, and that's usually made up of w what,

00:13:51               like seven, eight States roughly like in your region. And then from there, you can send your images onto the international competition level. Now there are people who skip all of that and go straight to the international, which is totally fine, too. I like to kind of work my way up because you get feedback every single time. And every single time one of the judges might see something different in your image.

00:14:12               So you can go in and you can tweak it and you can make it that much better for when you get to that international level. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. And this past year, yeah, it was a little bit different without district. So I found it really stressful to have to go straight to IPC. Cause I've always done districts and usually I at least get a couple Meredith and I'm like,

00:14:29               okay, I at least maybe have to switch out one. Or sometimes I get them all done and districts and you're like, Yeah. All right, relax next year. But yeah, this year It was really stressful to put my case together. You have to pick four. So yeah. Four images and yeah, I was like, Oh my gosh,

00:14:45               what to do? And there's, there's a challenge sometimes with doing a whole bunch of different States. Cause I started doing I today. I did my North Carolina PPA and I think I entered one other just online random state just to get a little more feedback on a couple images. And there was one image in particular that did merit at IPC, but it like squeaked by it.

00:15:09               PNC, I don't think at Meredith aim or maybe it didn't merit at the other one, actually I didn't put it in PE and North Carolina one, I don't think anyway, regardless it was, the title was forgotten. It was in the illustrative category, which there's different categories, portrait illustrative and all sorts of stuff. Like I said, if we went into all of the details of print competition,

00:15:29               this would go on forever, but we'll, we'll leave you with some places where you can learn more. But I think sometimes it comes down to like, if you just really, really love and feel like, feel an image that is just like, man, this is a piece of my heart and soul. I need to enter it. You know,

00:15:43               it always depends on the panel of judges you get at the day, but I was happy that that one made it through. It's a funny thing because you know, one of the pieces of advice that I always heard when I was starting out has never entered your own kids and print competition because, and it's probably the same thing with your, your own pets because you get so attached to those images and you just love them so much.

00:16:04               And it's really difficult to see the flaws in your images when it's your own kids. And you need to kind of look at your work a little bit more objectively and you need to look for those things that are holding it back, that you need to any flaws technical or whatever. And when you have something that is so dear to you and means so much to you,

00:16:23               it's, it is kind of risky because it can be so incredibly disappointing if it doesn't do as well as you want it to do. And, and that's disheartening. And I know a lot of people who get really frustrated and just like, all right, I'm done. I'm, I'm not competing anymore. I don't get it. I'm done. It's just stupid because they just need to step back and they need to look at it through somebody else's eyes.

00:16:44               And that's a really hard thing to do when you're looking at your own work. And that's, I think why it's so important too, to have people, whether they're mentors or judges, people who can give you feedback and talk to you, one-on-one about your image and what works and what doesn't work. And, but you also need to be careful that you don't talk to too many people because you're going to get different advice from every single person and that's overwhelming and confusing and that kind of thing as well.

00:17:07               So find, you know, maybe two or three people who you really trust and who, you know, does well in print competition and knows what they're talking about and listen to those people, don't ask 10 different people because that's just going to be too much. Yeah, absolutely. And what is a beautiful, incredible client image that so beautiful 40 by 60 on the wall,

00:17:27               your client loves, it's an amazing marketing image might not make for a good print competition image. So just because something that like an image that you love, you know, you find out that, Oh, this might not do very well in pre competition. It's just because it's a little bit of a different animal. So just have to take that kind of feedback with a grain of salt and know that,

00:17:47               you know, you're getting feedback, something very specific and how to, you know, make this image better or what images work best for this particular outlet. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And same thing. Like people will post their images on Facebook and you know, they'll get like hundreds of likes from their clients and their friends and everybody else. And then they they're like,

00:18:07               Oh, this image rocks, I'm going to submit it and print competition. And it totally bombs and competition. And it's the same thing. There's a very specific set of criteria. And with PPA and, and affiliates, they call that the 12 elements of a merit image. And we can link that we'll link that Nicole, you can like that, right.

00:18:25               We'll link that in the road. And those 12 things are the things that the judges are looking for in competition. And some of those are impact. Like it has to have really strong impact in order to do well. Another one is technical excellence. If you like, I was talking about earlier, if you've got flaws, technical flaws, that's going to hold you back.

00:18:43               They're looking for creativity. They're looking for style and composition. Like there are 12 very specific things. And if you can get an image that it contains all 12 of those things, you are going to kill it in print competition. You know, I think of it like a cheat sheet, like they're telling you exactly what you need to do. And then you just have to figure out how to do it.

00:19:01               And that's the hard part. I feel like a lot of people too, when you start off, you're like, okay, this is the box I need to play in. This is the type of images that you usually create for print competition, but then you get a little bit more comfortable and then you start like expanding that box a little bit and be like,

00:19:17               Hey, like I put one of my selfie dogs in for 'em, it didn't load, but it did merit, you know, wide angle, dog taking a selfie, you know, not a traditional print competition. But at that point I'm like, I understood those 12 elements. I'm like, all right, this has storytelling. This has impact. It is technically correct.

00:19:34               And, and you know, it did merit. So, yeah. So just because I think a lot of people start to get turned off by print competition because they're like, I'm an outdoor, natural light photographer. Everything is studio, which is hogwash because I've had multiple natural light lone images, lone. Like they they've for the, for you guys out there too.

00:19:55               They're like, wait, merit or low. And what's the difference, right? We shouldn't, we should probably go over that. You want to explain that really quickly? So Yeah, sure. So traditionally this year, again, things were a little bit different in the past. Judges have scored on with numbers. So you get a number typically somewhere between about 65 and 100,

00:20:13               we'll say, and you had to get a score of about 80 or more, exactly 80 or more in order to get what they call a merit image. And with that through PPA, you get basically a point and you earn points to get your master of photography degree or your craftsman degree. So your, your, your goal really is to earn merits or points toward those degrees.

00:20:32               If you get a merit image, if you're lucky enough to get a merit, then they typically would go through a whole second set of judging in order to get a second merit on that. And that is what they call a loan print. And the loan print came from historically, they would have the printed images and they have a traveling collection that they would loan out of those best images that they would loan out to different for different exhibits at different places.

00:20:58               And that's why they call them loan prints. Now this year, they're going to get rid of the word loan. They're not going to be called loan prints anymore, which is really going to be weird for those of us competing for a long time Know, I don't know how I feel about it. Like I totally get it, but yeah, I totally get it cute.

00:21:17               I like nobody knows what lone means anymore. It's a very confusing word for people who don't know, but yeah, it's going to be a little different for those of us. They call it now I forget Image of excellence, I think, or something like that. Okay. Yeah. That doesn't have the same amount of loans. No, it totally works.

00:21:37               So yeah. So really your goal is to get an 80 or above. And now this, this past year they changed their scoring system as well. They got rid of the scores and it was just merit or no merit and then loan or no loan, which really expedited the judging. And I actually really liked it because when you're at that level, that you're at the international competition,

00:21:56               like you don't necessarily need the feedback. I don't think of the numbers anymore. The numbers are great for feedback, but that's what the earlier competitions are for. When you get to that point, you it's like an in and out. You either do it or you don't do it, you're there, or you're not. And so a merit or a not,

00:22:11               I thought that was great. And then everything that Meredith got judged a second time and it either went loan or it didn't. And I really liked that system a lot. Now that being said, I, I don't necessarily like that for state competitions and local competitions and that kind of thing. Cause I do think that the judging or the, the scoring through judging is really great for feedback.

00:22:31               There's a big difference between an image that scores an 80 and an image scores a 90 or 95, huge difference. And the more you watch and learn about scoring and judging and competition, the more you're going to understand what those numbers mean as well. It's really hard to explain that. And A lot of state and local competitions, when we have our,

00:22:52               the judging of the competition, there's usually kind of a peanut gallery. It's usually called like the 79 club or something. That's the one number you're like, Oh, I was so close, but we're in another room. So we don't bother the judges, but we have the feed. We can hear all the judging feedback you're with your peers. And they,

00:23:11               you know, you get to, can ask questions. There's usually people in there that are well versed on printed competition that will, you know, help you understand different things, answer your questions. It's such a supportive community. So you guys, if you have local and stumbling, you all have stayed if you're in the U S but if you have local affiliates near you or even your state,

00:23:31               even if you have to go a little bit further, it's so worthwhile to join. It makes me really sad to see so many of these smaller organizations struggling financially because they bring so much to the table. And I think a lot of people's photographers think, Oh, well, I can only learn from unpaid photographer. I can only learn from pet photographers.

00:23:55               And that's just not the case. I mean, I would go to the one in Pittsburgh, our triangle PPA that we used to have, and there would be somebody I'd even look at their work and maybe it wasn't work that even resonated with me. You know, it's not work that I wanted to do. It's a whole different genre. I would still go and I would still take away a nugget every single time.

00:24:13               You have something to learn from someone. So gosh, and I think on your local affiliates people, And I think that's the thing is that if you can learn, I mean, if you look at the cost to join, it's really not that expensive. And then divide that out by the number of meetings that they offer every year. It's, it's,

00:24:32               it's nothing it's pennies. And if you can honestly take one thing from each of those speakers, I mean, it pays for itself tenfold. And then not even to mention like the networking and the relationships that you can build with your local community. And that's huge because then you can start referring people back and forth people that you know, and that you trust.

00:24:50               And you don't want to do that with strangers because you don't know them. You don't know their business practices, but once you get to know them that's and they get to know you even more importantly, that's huge. So yeah. Support them. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. All right. So hopefully Lisa people are listening and they're like, Hmm,

00:25:06               I'm interested. I want to learn more about this. Where would they go to learn more? What recommendations do you have? And then I'll share some of the places that I learned from too. Sure. Well, one of the easiest things that you can do right now is check out print competition.com, print competition.com is the website. It's the place that most of the affiliates are using to run their print competitions.

00:25:30               You can join as a member. And if you, if you enter any of those, you have to join, but you can join as a premium member. And I think it's like maybe 15 bucks a quarter it's really expensive. And you can actually look at all the archives from years and years and years of print competition. So you can look at,

00:25:45               by association, you can look by maker, you can look by score. You can look by category. I mean, there are so many ways to search this database and then those that were challenged. And that's a whole nother thing that we haven't talked about with the judging is that the judges can challenge the score of an image. And in which case there's going to be a discussion.

00:26:00               And so if there was a discussion about an image that's all recorded and all of that is there too. So it's such a huge learning tool just to go in and see what did well and why, and, and listen, and just learn through that for really inexpensive. So that's one thing that I would recommend. There are people, there are mentors that you can get,

00:26:20               whether they're local or online. And I know Nicole you've, you've got some, a couple of things that you want to mention with that. So that's great. But you know, certainly for, for those animal photographers who are out there, who that's, I assume who was listening to aim has such a great competition. We've been doing this for a few years now,

00:26:40               and we've got hundreds and hundreds of images every year are judged. And the thing that I love about our competition is that we use train judges. We're hosted by the twin cities professional photography association, which is the PPA affiliate. And so we kind of align with the PPA way of doing things and use PPA trained judges. And so these are people who know what they're looking for,

00:26:59               who have gone through this already so many times who really can give great feedback and are looking for things that are going to do well. And I'm telling you the images that were in the grand imaging awards this year. So many of them we saw previously at the AME competition and the coolest thing about that was that they learned they tweak their images and then they got even better.

00:27:20               By the time they got to the international competition. Yeah. I was watching that AME competition in the spring and I was just like, Oh my God, these are the most amazing animal images I've ever seen just across the board. The quality was off the charts. It was so good. Yeah. Yeah. For where you guys can learn, definitely check out that print competition.com.

00:27:41               It is amazing. There is that premium membership. If you want to join. Yeah. It's 14 or $15 every quarter. It's really affordable. You can also do some searching. It's much more limited on a free membership, but I think you can still see some things on there. So definitely go check that out. And I'm not sure if you have to be the premium member to stream the live like game day,

00:28:03               it's a free members can stream that. Yep. Perfect. So, yeah. So even if you don't join, like you can, it'll tell you on there what days, and we're starting to get into print competition season here where the state affiliates in the local affiliates are doing that. And it'll say, you know, February 25th, this particular organization is,

00:28:22               and you can log in to print competition that day on your free account and stream the actual print competition going on somewhere on the other side of the world, which is just a great way again, to watch and learn. And then there's just so many people that are going to be willing to answer your questions. Some other really good resources are, if you're a member of PPA,

00:28:41               they have the super one day classes. I think they're still called super one day. No, they're not called that. I think they might've changed. Yeah, no, they're calling them now. PPA workshops. Okay. All right. Well that makes sense for one day, like I'll probably be calling the super one day classes for the next decade, but PPA workshops formerly super one day,

00:29:08               formerly super Monday classes. Anyway, check those out. They do those twice a year and they're basically workshops that other members will host just to earn some service merits, to help, you know, raise up the industry. There's often someone teaching on print competition. That's actually, how I got started is I took a super Monday. So it was way back then from Christine Walsh,

00:29:34               Newton in Ohio. And she was one of my very first print competition mentors. And then I also a year or two in, I took a class from Michelle parsley from elevate your art on her print competition class. Christine's not teaching print competition stuff any longer, but Michelle still is. She has that print competition class. It is phenomenal. Anything Michelle is teaching.

00:29:56               If you want to learn it, she is an amazing teacher, highly recommend I'll link to that, that link in the show notes as well. It's a wait list right now. I'm not sure when she's opening that class again, but you can put your email down and she'll let you know. And if you want to get to those show notes, hair of the dog academy.com/five

00:30:14               two, we'll take you to those show notes and you can get all of the goodness links of free competition that we will put that. Awesome. So yeah, I'm super excited back to aim animal image makers, super excited for this coming year for our print competition. What are the dates For this year? Judging is going to be April 15th, which is a Thursday.

00:30:37               That is the first day of the conference. And of course, you know, we're not through COVID yet. So last year's conference, we postponed a full year because of COVID and we're not doing, we're not, I am not postponing on other year, but we did have to make the decision so that we could go forward and plan what we're going to do.

00:30:54               So we're doing a virtual conference this year, which is going to be awesome. We've got some really great speakers. Those are all on the website as well. So check that out, but competition is going to be that's the only thing the first day was, so that's Thursday the 15th now, depending upon the number of images that are entered, we may end up adding an additional day of judging or portion of the day.

00:31:13               And I don't know if that'll be the day before, the day after that, we'll have to kind of wait and see, and we'll decide on that where we almost have our judges put together. We have, I've got one person that I'm waiting to hear back from yet. And once we have our full jury, then that will also go on the website and Oh my God,

00:31:27               you guys, they're going to be awesome. This is going to be like such a great competition. I'm so excited to have the jury that we have, like, it's going to just be awesome. We've got so many great categories and we added another one this year. Our new category this year is bloopers, which is not gonna be super fun because who doesn't get just those really goofy photos.

00:31:48               You know, I love it Really important question, Lisa, you know, IPC, you can only enter four, but aim and most state affiliates. That is not the case, correct? That is not the case. Yeah, you can do, we may have limited it to like 15 or something like that, but you can do a lot. And the reason I'm going,

00:32:08               we did that for a couple of different reasons. One, we've got so many different categories, so we want you to be able to do different categories, but to, you know, we're at that level where we want you guys to get the feedback so that you can go onto districts in IPC and know like, all right, these didn't do well.

00:32:23               I'm throwing those out. These were my best four. I'm, I'm definitely going to move forward with those. And so that's why we do that. We want you guys to be able to try out a bunch of different things and see where things end up and get the feedback that, that you need in order to make those decisions going forward. It's,

00:32:37               it's such a great learning that we don't want to limit your learning. Yes, absolutely. For sure. If, well, if last year's any indication, I think you're definitely going to need to add that second day because it was, there were a lot and it was, yeah, it was fantastic for those of you guys that are listening to this that are involved in your state or local organization.

00:32:57               That's a PPA affiliate. AME is doing something awesome. I led PNC. No, she just North Carolina professional photographers association and they're looking into it and we'll probably be contacting you soon, hopefully Lisa, but yeah. Tell them about the awesome, just basically affiliate award to help spread the word about how awesome animal photography is. That's right. Well, animal photography is awesome and that's the whole bottom Line.

00:33:22               Like we want the world to know, and We've really seen an increase in the number of animal images that have been submitted in competition. And we want to reward those makers. It used to be that there were one or two that did the neatest didn't see a lot, but because there are so many more, more and more affiliates are adding a category for animals,

00:33:39               which I think is great. We're like one of the biggest advocates for animal photography. Obviously we put together a whole conference about it. So what we are doing is we are offering a print competition award for any affiliate who has an animal category. And the award is going to include a beautiful trophy, as well as free registration of that image at the animal image makers conference at the next one coming up.

00:34:02               So any that happened between now and April, you can submit that image to the April one, any that happened after that, it would be the following year, but this is one of those things. If you guys are part of an affiliate, make sure that they know there's no charge to the affiliate for this. Like it's, we're just going to send you a free trophy.

00:34:15               And it's awesome. We, we really want animal photography to, to continue to increase in its visibility in the just technical excellence that we're seeing and the creativity that we're seeing with the animal images and what better way to reward those people then with the trophy. So yeah, we want the affiliates to have an animal category, so that's what we're doing. So yeah,

00:34:38               that information is all on the animal image makers website on the print competition or image competition page all the way down at the bottom. There's a link on all the way at the bottom of that page for the affiliates. So yeah, it's just a quick, easy signup. I think we've got probably 12 or 13 of them signed up already, which is awesome.

00:34:54               Cause we just launched this at the beginning of January. I am love it. I love it. Well, let's just show how popular pet photography or animal photography I should say is becoming, I mean, who doesn't, who doesn't love looking at pictures of dogs and cats and horses and other creatures. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can I tell you about one other cool thing we're done?

00:35:15               Of course. All right. So another thing that we're doing this year, that's brand new, again, as a way to help the animal photographers gain some credentialing for their clients is that we are offering an entire credentialing program through aim, which is going to be super cool. So people can sign up for this and you collect points kind of like the degree system with like a master of photography degree.

00:35:37               You're, you're gaining Merits there. So you're collecting points. And once you reach the first level, you become an accredited professional of animal imagery, and then there are different categories from there. So we think it's going to be just a super cool way for animal photographers to stand apart from their competition, to really show their professionalism and their dedication to their art.

00:35:56               I love it. I love it. And even though I highly recommend, well this year at spiritual, I do highly recommend that everyone attended the virtual one and go to the real lifeline next year, when you can actually, you know, see people in real life again, but you don't have to be in attendance to enter the print competition. Right?

00:36:12               Lisa that's correct. Yeah. Anybody can do it from anywhere. And we do have a lot of people that can't make it. You know, th th the past couple of years, they haven't been able to come well, last year we had to push it anywhere. We could go anywhere last the last year. And we still have like hundreds of entries.

00:36:27               So there you go. Yeah, no, this is open to anybody. The competition is open to absolutely anybody. You can do one image, you can do 12 image. Like it's totally up to you. Yeah. We would love for you to come because there's nothing like being in person and being together and forming those bonds through the community so that you can consider these people,

00:36:44               your friends. It's really hard to get to know people on a personal level online. And I think that's the thing that everybody has been missing this past year without being able to travel. And without being able to see one another and be together with people. And, you know, I talked to so many people who took part in the imaging imaging USA from PPA this year.