Submissions and Results from The Portrait Master’s Awards and Accrediation | Sherry Penner

A while back I mentioned I was submitting some images to the Portrait Masters Awards and Accreditation to work toward my accreditation. This is something I have wanted to do for a while, with the goal to get to my Master’s Level. There are a few associations where you can earn your accreditation through, PPOC (Professional Photographers of Canada), PPA (Professional Photographers of America) and The Portrait Masters, maybe there are others but these are the 3 I am most familiar with. I chose the Portrait Masters for two reasons, I am already a member and I am first and foremost a portrait photographer so it was a no brainer really. This association is fairly new but full of contemporary photographers that I aspire to be in the ranks with. Some of the work that comes out of these competitions is mind-blowing.

This was my first time entering and so not really sure how the judging might go I picked 11 of my favourite images and submitted them in January. The way it’s judged in PM is by Bronze, Silver or Gold. Bronze is considered professional standard, and it’s not easy to get them, Silver and Gold are very hard. This round of submissions there were over 11,000 entries and not very many were Gold, like less than 20 maybe fewer. So I will say that getting a Bronze is something to be proud of.

You might be wondering why I didn’t submit any of my Art Portraits. They do have a Creative Art portrait category and I will aspire to enter in the future, but one of the restrictions in the rules is you can only use images that you personally took, and most of my Art Portrait work has stock images in them.

Here is what you need to score:

All 11 of my image scored a Bronze, and 3 of them Bronze with Distinction (scoring 75-79). I’m pretty happy with that as these are my regular level of client images, this is what you would expect to get in any given session with me which means that I am definitely at a professional level (okay I know I am at a professional level but this is in the opinion of 13 International Award Winning Masters and well that feels pretty good to be acknowledged by them). Next round of submissions is open in May, and I will submit some more. I need 25 points to get to my Associates Level and right now I am sitting at 5.5 points.

These are the images I submitted: