Mr and Mrs Jones always looked forward to Date Night

You may remember that I recently entered a nude self portrait into a photographic competition. Well, the results are in... I only went and got Silver in the Men Nude category. (As well as a First in the Academic Nude category and Second place overall in the competition)!!

Please visit www.photoshootawards.com to see the winning entries and this year's catalogue. A superb collection of nude photography.


I like entering competitions. It can be scary to put your work out there in front of professionals from related industries, but I don't think the fear should put you off. Sometimes your work gets nowhere - maybe it just wasn't suitable for that particular competition. Sometimes your pictures get noticed and put into the finalists selection or even better, given placements above being short-listed. It's a very good feeling knowing that someone else liked your work and thought it worthy to put forward as a nominee or finalist.

We often work in isolation (unless we're acting as part of a team), for the past year I've been working in the cupboard under the stairs. When I was at college we had peers and tutors to help critique our work, but then we had to get used to assessing our own performance. This is good up to a certain point and if you're doing something you love then you must find a way to keep doing it (within legal restrictions of course), but by entering a competition you get the chance to ask "How am I doing? Am I any good?" or "Hey, here's some crazy stuff I've been working on and I want a second opinion."

We're never going to agree wholly with the jurors' choices, Some competitions are simply not for me and I know (after failed attempts to prove this otherwise) that my work will fail in some and succeed in others.

If you buy a book of a photographer's work it will often have a bio at the back and competitions are a decent way to legitimise our work and start creating a bio of our own.

Every now and then you might even get a first or a second place. (Or win something awesome like the Leica M Monochrom this blog is based around).

Here I am working in a small town on a small island in a small cupboard under the stairs and every now and again I catch myself having a little smile at some of the results on my competition bio.




Anyways, back to self portraits... I think I've found a comfortable way of being in front of the camera. More Negative Space Man than Invisible Man, it's time for another outing with Mr Jones whilst the Leica is off in Germany for a service.

As it was Valentine's Day last weekend I thought it only right that we saw the romantic side of Mr Jones today...



Mr and Mrs Jones always looked forward to Date Night

Copyright: Clayton Bastiani