And the winner is...

Well that’s it! The Wedding Photo of the Year competition finally closes. I did say in my post on Friday that going into the last weekend “no one is safe”, and that proved to be the case! Before giving the results can I just say “Thank you” once again to everyone who took the time to vote and leave comments. I’m glad everyone had fun with it. A couple of people attempted to vote twice, but it did say “one vote per person” so the second one was discounted and a couple of you sent in messages but forgot to actually state who you were voting for, lol, but as you’ll see from the results it wouldn’t have swung things differently. Anyway, here’s the top five…

5th place: Katrina and Paul’s photograph.
4th place: Leigh-ann and Jonathan’s photo.

3rd place, with 61votes: Lucie and Ryan’s photo.
2nd place, with 88 votes: Kelly and Nick’s picture.

1st place, with 116 votes: Jenna and Casey’s photograph.

And my favourite comment from the competition: “Nick scrubs up quite well, but to look that good must be thanks to your photographic magic!” Thanks for that Richard. And don’t worry, I wont reveal your name ;)

So, well done to the top five couples! The couples in second and third place will receive an enlargement of their photograph printed and mounted and the winners will get their image produced as a gorgeous Gallery Print. I’ll also do a free Trash the Dress shoot for any of the top five who are up for it. Trash the Dress is currently taking America by storm but hasn’t yet taken off over here with the famously reserved and conservative Brits. Basically, what we do is a post wedding photo session where we can be more adventurous with the poses and sets and locations as we don’t have to worry about “not getting the dress dirty”. Not only is it a unique opportunity to wear your wedding dress again, but its great fun and produces innovative and fantastic pictures. So perhaps all of you who have voted in the competition can now talk Katrina, Leigh-ann, Lucie, Kelly and Jenna into booking one!

The top five photographs will be left on display on my portrait website: www.relaxedimages.com

As well as my own Wedding Photo of the Year competition I’ve also been judging the SWRI Photography Proficiency course this week. I was appointed as National Judge last year, so this is my second one. All the candidates spend the year honing and improving their photographic skills across 12 different categories and then they enter their best image for each category. They come into the SWRI head quarters where they are sub-edited and made ready for judging. I then come in and start going through each candidates entry of twelve images. As well as allocating marks to each photograph, which are then tallied up to give their final overall score, its my job to write up a critique on each image for the benefit and future progress of the candidate. There is a three tier award system for total scores upwards of 65% with the highest award being for an achieved score above 95%. It’s certainly interesting work and something I enjoy enormously.

I’m also patiently awaiting to see how I have done in the 2009 Wedding Album of the Year competition. This is run by the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers, and as one of the largest association of photographers in the world it is one of the most fiercely contested competitions amongst professionals with literally several thousand entries. Anyway, I’m hoping I’ve picked up a Special Merit Award for one of my 2009 wedding albums so I'll let you know in due course.

Please keep a check on the News pages of my websites as there is a couple of good wedding shows coming up soon and I’m also going to be running a special valentine’s day promotion for anyone who may be currently looking for a wedding photographer in Scotland. Thank you again for those who got involved in the Wedding Photo competition, and don’t forget to encourage the girls to go for the Trash the Dress :)