Published! Professional Photographer Magazine

As part of our winning Diamond Level Photographers of the Year for 2011, we were featured in Professional Photographers Magazine. It's a challenge and a thrill to compete each year in the International Print Competition (IPC) with the Professional Photographers of America (PPA).

Out of the thousands of IPC entrants only a dozen achieved the Diamond Level Photographer of the Year award, by having all four of their entries both Merit and Loan. The greatest thrill for us is knowing that it is actual client work that has been judged by our peers. We aren't the type of photographers to go out and photograph sunsets or bowls of fruit. We want to submit work that is literally created in the heat of the moment for our clients.

In the last few years, we've become known for wedding album entries. Instead of being critiqued on a single image from an event, we feel it is important to be judged on the whole body of work or story of a wedding. For us it is the ultimate test, to be creative, professional, consistent and meticulous not just for one shot, but for a whole day or thousands of shots.

It's a thrill to arrive at each of our clients weddings and tell ourselves, "Today is the day. Today we will get our next winning album." We believe that all of our work is a self portrait, and as artists, we want to be remembered for a complete body of work. Entering print competition keeps us constantly striving to be better than we were yesterday, and to never let good enough be good enough.

To see more imagery from the four weddings that were submitted into the Loan Collection. Click on the links below.
Julie and Christian
Abby and Brian
Logan and Jonathan
Amy and Gary

PPA District Judging Results!

The Professional Photographers of America, with nearly 22,000 members in the US and Canada, each year holds it's annual District Judging. We are apart of the Northeast District, which is shown in green on the map above. Two weeks ago, our District Judging was held and we thought we would share the results...

We entered the maximum number of entries, which is four. All four happened to be wedding albums from 2010 and one from 2009. In order to 'merit' a print/album has to score above an 80 on a scale of 0-100. We are very happy to say that all four of our entries merited with scores of 89, 90, 90 & 92.

Of all the entrants to our District competition, only 16 other photographers merited all four entries. Going 'four for four' is extremely coveted because it makes you eligible for two other very coveted and prestigious awards.

First, at the District level, you are eligible to win the Canon Par Excellence Award. With only five Districts, only five photographers in the entire country can win this award each year. Secondly, at the International Print Competition held later this June, you are then eligible to win some level of the Photographer of the Year Award.

We are very honored to say that we did win the Canon Par Excellence Award. We also now have the title of being the only photographers to have won it for the second time in it's five year history. We'll be sure to let you know the results of the International Judging later this summer.

A special 'Thank You' to our clients, who help make these awards possible. we are honored that you chose us to share such a momentous occasion and that you trust us with your memories! Below is a sample spread from each album. You can also click on the links below to see their wedding blog posts.

Julie and Christian

Abby & Brian

Logan and Jonathan

Amy & Gary

Canon Par Excellence Award

Canon just launched a web page featuring their Par Excellence Award Winners. While we won this award in 2008, it's inaugural year, we are still very proud to be one of it's 33 winners. We are also the only winners to have won with just wedding album entries.

To win the Par Excellence Award, the image maker must receive a score of 80 or above on all four photographic entries. District judges will then consider the maker's entire body of work using PPA's (Professional Photographers of America) "Twelve Elements of a Merit Image."

People often ask us why we still compete in photographic competitions and we can readily tell you its because we relish learning and polishing our craft. While photographers can enter any type of image they wish from fine art, landscapes, etc., we thrive on entering our 'everyday' work. Images that we produce for our clients on a daily basis. It keeps us striving to make our work better for not only ourselves, but also our clients...that is what really matters!

Top Wedding Album Awards

Last week was the Mid-East States Professional Photographers (MESPPA) Convention and the Professional Photographers of Ohio (PPO) State Convention. We entered four wedding albums (the max number of entries possible) for the print and album judging. PPA (Professional Photographers of America) affiliated judges were flown in from all over the country to judge this competition.

We are happy to say that all four of our entries merited. We were then also lucky enough to receive 2 Kodak Gallery Awards, Outstanding Wedding Album in the Region, Top Special Events Album, the Bill Stockwell Award for Top Album in Ohio, Mid-East States Top Ten Photographers of the Year and Ohio Top Ten Photographers of the Year. These same entries will then be submitted to the International Print Judging held by the PPA in Atlanta in July.

A special thank you to our wonderful clients who really are the ones to make all of this possible. They place so faith in us and allow us to capture their special day. It truly is a collaboration between us and our couples to get such great photographs. We are very thankful and humbled to work with such wonderful couples on such a momentous occasion!

To see more of the images from these weddings, click on their names appearing in the order from top to bottom: Moira and Quentin, Andrea and Patrick, Abby and Wes, Brittany and Josh.

Bride's Choice Award 2010!

We are honored to have received The WeddingWire Bride's Choice Awards ™. The Bride's Choice Awards recognizes the top local wedding professionals from the WeddingWire Network that demonstrate excellence in quality, service, responsiveness, and professionalism. Unlike other awards in which winners are selected by the organization, the Bride's Choice Awards are determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 500,000 newlyweds. This year's winners represent the top five percent of WeddingWire's vendor community, which consists of over 100,000 local wedding professionals nationwide.

WeddingWire is a helpful planning resource for bride's allowing them to shop for vendors, add their own if not listed and then organize all those resources...sort of an online bridal binder. Check them out at weddingwire.com

Ohio 'Top Ten' Photographers of the Year

The Professional Photographers of Ohio’s annual convention was a few weeks and our Regional Competition was earlier last month. We entered three wedding albums from the 2008 wedding season and were honored to win two Fuji Masterpiece Awards and Kodak Gallery Award for Best Wedding Album in the State and the Region. We both also placed in the Ohio Photographer Top Ten. Here are the winning albums. Enjoy!

Brittany & Josh

Nikki & Ben

Mark photographed Nikki's mom's wedding too (over twenty+ years ago)...pretty cool, huh?

Amber & Chad...you'll be able to see more of their wedding in this Fall's Issue of The Knot Ohio.

"The envelope please...."

We are very excited to say that all four of our wedding album entries at PPA's International Print Judging went into the Loan Collection making us Diamond Level Photographers of the Year for PPA. Only 11 other photographers earned that honor this year. Crazy to think that weddings from little old Dayton, Ohio can compete with weddings from all over the world!

Mark also earned his Imaging Excellence Bar and Jennifer earned her Imaging Excellence Degree. A little birdie has also told us that we have an album(s) in the PPA's Top Ten Wedding Albums!? Nothing is official yet, but we'll let you know when we hear something. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

It seems silly, but the Top Ten is the honor that gets my heart racing the most. Many of the photographers that we idolize are in that Top Ten ranking and it is very humbling to be honored with your idols...we feel like Sally Fields, "You like me, you really really like me."

What amazes me most is the fact that we are the only photographers that have been in the Top Ten five times. I know its a combination of luck and hard work and when we step back to look at that accomplishment it doesn't even seem real to us. Now that we have tooted our own horns enough I'll try to redeem myself by leaving you with these thoughts...Muhammad Ali said, "If you can do it, it ain't bragging." :)

International Print Judging

This week Mark will be in Daytona Beach, Florida with the Professional Photographers of America's International Print and Album judging. Mark and Jennifer are both Affiliated Judges for the PPA and Mark is also a Jury Chair.

Each year photographers can enter four prints or albums to be judged at their state or regional print competition, which then go onto to the national judging. Entries are critiqued on twelve elements such as lighting, technique, creativity, composition and story telling. If your print scores an 80 or higher (on a 100 point scale), you have earned one print exhibition merit. At the national level, you then have the opportunity to have your merited print enter the Loan Collection, which is a high honor and is considered to be the 'best of the best.' When your merited print is accepted into the Loan Collection, you can earn another print exhibition merit for a possible total earned in one year of eight merits. That is if you merit and loan all four entries. This then determines Photographer of the Year for PPA.

It takes 13 print merits plus twelve additional merits from speaking or volunteering to earn your Master of Photography Degree. It takes an additional 25 merits to earn your Craftsman Degree. To earn your Imaging Excellence Degree you have to have 13 or more Loan Collection exhibition merits.

Looooong story short, we are both crossing our fingers this year for two more Loan entries each. With those two Loan Collection merits, Mark will earn his Imaging Excellence Bar, which is for 13 Loan merits above the 13 original Loans needed for the Imaging Excellence Degree ("rare air" as our friend Helen says). Jennifer will earn her Imaging Excellence Degree just two years after earning both her Masters and Craftsman Degrees...pretty cool!

So whats all this mean? Nothing....other than we like continually striving to better ourselves. Having our worked critiqued by International Jurors helps us stay current and is truly the best form of continuing education for photographers.

Keep your fingers crossed for us and the four brides whose albums we entered! One spread from each of their albums is shown below.

Neal/Hoffman...Dayton Art Institute

Riggsby/Munson...The Officer's Club

Berg/Hurewitz...The Schuster Center for Performing Arts

Wolientz/Feldman...The Hilton at Easton in Columbus

What a Convention!

Wow! The 2008 Professional Photographers of Ohio convention and print competiton was awesome...probably the best in years.

Big news too...much bigger than we could have ever hoped...Mark and I entered four wedding albums this year and merited all four! We won two Fuji Masterpiece awards, two Kodak Gallery awards and Canon's Par Excellence award...which also included a new Canon 5D Camera!

We won best Wedding Album in Ohio and also Top Wedding Album in the 6 state Region. We both won Ohio Photographer of the year and also Mid-East States Photographer of the year(this is the first time two people have ever won these awards.) Mark is the only photographer to have won Ohio Photographer of the Year six times and the Mid-East States Photographer of the year five times.

Very shortly we will have the winning albums posted in the Gallery section of our web site. A special thank you to the Neal/Hoffman families, Riggsby/Munson families, Wolientz/Feldman families and Berg/Herewitz familes for sharing such a momentous occasion with us. We love what we do because of all the great people that we work with!