Awards are bad… for me. And that’s why I stopped entering last year at some point. I’ll tell you why…. But first…
I have to start by saying awards aren’t inherently bad — in fact I think the emergence of awards has done a lot for raising the standards of photography across the industry. I remember seeing Fearless awards for the first time and thinking the bar had just been raised so high, and was so far from what I was shooting at that time. It gave me something to aim for, and winning my first Fearless was a great feeling.
That raising of standards has helped turn wedding photography into a more credible genre of photography. But awards can also be trouble causers.
I have won awards. A good handful of them. And truly I’m proud of them. But I knew a long time ago I should stop entering. Here’s a little story:
In January 2016 I was standing on the train platform waiting for a train to London. The TWIA national final was that night. If you don’t know TWIA, it’s been one of the more revered industry awards here in the UK in the last decade.
Do you ever get that stress which makes your eye socket hot? Well I had that, plus I couldn’t hold a conversation or concentrate on anything other than the fact that the only thing that mattered in the world was that I won the award that night.
If I won, I was worthy. If I didn’t win, I was over-hyped and worthless. That’s honestly how I felt.
I won, so it’s fine.
But it’s not fine is it. And that’s why I included the quote from Cool Runnings at the top. To feel worthy at that time I needed the validation of this award and lots of others. Honestly it was a wonderful moment of life and I’m proud of the win, but with hindsight, it was more of a ‘phew’ than a ‘yay’ moment.
That should’ve been when I knew to quit awards to be honest because if you’re saying phew instead of yay, the psychology attached to the awards is quite messed up.
That year – 2015 to 2016 tax year – I spent almost £2400 on awards. That’s mainly entry fees but includes tickets for awards events too. If you didn’t gasp already, read that again. That’s not just TWIA but all the other awards I was entering at the time, voraciously trying to win as many as I could to keep me and other people thinking I was good at this job. Looking back now I can’t fathom how I thought that was a good use of my hard earned money, but without an awards badge on or next to my images, I just couldn’t convince myself they were any good. That was just one year too, I’ve never worked out my total spend on awards but it will be eye watering.
And yeah, I used to use the “awards are just for marketing” and “I just do it for the feedback” lines too.
Obviously I got some nice attention for winning TWIA, but in some twist of karma I didn’t take another booking for over 3 months afterwards. If you don’t believe in ‘the universe’ the next line will make me sound like a fruit loop but I think that was the universe saving me from my ego and giving me a big hint that awards weren’t the be all and end all, and certainly weren’t healthy for me.
The next year I entered TWIA again as the reigning champ, but this time I lost in the regionals — the only reason I entered again the year after that was to somehow avenge that defeat. What a bellend. I did ‘win back’ the region and I even won the national award again, but it was even more of a ‘phew’ moment than the first win. The first one was a ‘phew-yay’, but this time it was just a bitter ‘phew’ as if order had somehow been restored.
After that they invited me to the judging panel. I always hated judging and only accepted for the ego points because I knew I wasn’t going to enter again and this gave me a reason to hide behind. I only judged one year (I honestly hate the subjectivity of judging art) and from that point on I had been winding down my involvement in awards until I stopped altogether before the 2021 season.
Maybe the only reason you know me or follow me is because I’ve been a shameless attention seeker for quite some time, let’s be honest. First through awards, then six years of NineDots, and now here. Although I think of all my attention seeking to date, this is definitely the healthiest and comes from the best place.
I left NineDots mid 2020 and decided soon after to stop entering awards. I call it my mid-you-know-what-crisis but it wasn’t a crisis at all and was done calmly. I wanted to get back to being ‘just a photographer’ again, back to focusing only on what I was creating in relative silence and seeing if I could just be happy creating for me and my clients. Not for awards or for reputation or any of that.
It has been wonderful and that’s the only reason I’ve been able to return to ‘the industry’ with The Positive Creatives and superchARJ. I still struggle without the validation but I’m working hard on it!
If any of this has resonated with you – the shocking expense, the ‘phew’ vs ‘yay’ litmus test, the not feeling worthy without awards badges… then I’d encourage you to either take a break from awards or just work hard on consciously decoupling awards from your photography. Loads and loads of amazing photographers never enter awards.
Awards can be great for marketing, but they say nothing about our artistic souls.
Thanks for reading,
Adam
PS – I’ve not even spoken about the ABSOLUTE CRUSHING DISAPPOINTMENT of losing. I have a really great but embarrassing story about not making it into the Rangefinder Rising Star list TWICE to illustrate how losing caused me to behave like a total moron, but I’ll save that. Ask me at the bar.
PPS – I didn’t have time to talk about the fact that from a clients perspective I think awards mean everything or nothing. And if they mean everything, your photography style and approach doesn’t mean much.
PPPS – Clearly I need to do another issue on awards.
PPPPS – Let’s all watch Cool Runnings this week.
