Well, it’s official – I got the news today that I’ve been awarded a Fellowship by the British Institute of Professional Photography (BIPP) 🙂
By their definition, an FBIPP award is “attainable for distinguished and exceptional ability and creativity” and my panel of landscape and cityscape images that were submitted evidently hit the mark!
A Fellowship is considered as the highest qualification that there is within the professional body and the fact I’ve been awarded one is quite an honour, as I am essentially a photographer with no official or academic training to speak of in my past.
My first exposure to the BIPP was when I qualified for direct access at Associate level in 2010 for my portraiture and fashion photography work. Obviously a lot has changed since then – in terms of my ability, equipment, location and focus – and this time I decided to submit a panel of landscape, cityscape and commercial images to the assessors. Along with a book of supporting material (and with an exception made for my lack of physical attendance as I’m writing this in Shanghai!) they seemed to like what they saw and confirmed my fellowship in a new category of visual arts today.
The submission actually consists of a 70 page book, panel of 30 images and a lot of detail – but for reference, here is a small sample of the key “portfolio pages” from the book for you to see 🙂
I guess that’s not bad going for a local boy from Weymouth!