Last fall when I was taking a photography class, the teacher came to me before class with a entry form and suggested I enter a nationwide photography contest by Photographers Forum for high school and college students. Without much thought I opted to take his suggestion and entered a grouping of photos from my Human Footprint portfolio. Time passed and I thought nothing of this after a while… then in January I received a piece of “official” looking mail from an unknown sender and much to my surprise it was a “Congratulations, out of 14,000 entrants, you have been chosen as a finalist in our college contest”. With this my photo moves onto the next level of judging and will be included in their annual print book, at least under the finalist section. I was excited and surprised. A month later I received another letter informing me that I was chosen as one of the college honorable mention photos, and now would be included in the “Honorable Mention” section of the same book. Looking deeper into the numbers, there were about 700 college finalists and 100college honorable mention photos. To this day I am still a bit shocked and most definitely honored to have a photo chosen at this level. My photo (shown above) “Boise Cascade” is listed on The Photographers Forum website and will soon come out in print. Finally as if all that wasn’t enough, I just received another email from them stating because of placing highly in the completion they are requesting a portfolio to review for further publication. I honestly never intended for my photography to go anywhere other than for family or personal use, however I am quite excited for what the future may hold, as well as inspired to continue to move forward in challenging myself.
