Competition year is over! Can I get a Halleluiah?
Ten months of creating 3 images each month that are good enough to turn the judges eye far enough to take notice of them amongst the many thousands submitted. It’s a real struggle at times but in some cases the creativity flows and ideas bounce and magic happens.
The judges from The Guild of Photographers met at judge headquarters this week to go through all the images entered this year and selected their top ten choices for each category of the competition. Literally tens of thousands of images whittled down to 10 of the best. An unenviable task!
I’m blown away to have two of my portraits selected which are both in the Avant Garde category.
The overall winners and runners up will be announced at the fabulous awards night early next February.
So the images that were selected are these two which feature, Ziggi. Perhaps the most creative and multi-talented person I’ve ever met in fact.
I had contacted Ziggi with a sliver of an idea for some images and we just seemed to grow these quickly and got the plans into action.
We did these over two sessions in the studio.
The colours we went for aren’t an accident. They were carefully chosen as they represent the colours of the transgender flag. A celebration of Ziggi’s personality and journey.
On the final shoot day Ziggi confided in me that he was shortly to be going for top surgery and we made some images that celebrated this, reflective, optimistic and emotional.
We played Bowie tunes of course. The studio was filled with smoke and light and Ziggi’s personality took over. Pose after pose came with ease and every now and again Bowie would appear right in front of me…. an unmistakable turn of the head or frozen pose that just oozed classic Bowie. A true chameleon performance and it was just the perfect creative session. The photos are some of the best images I’ve made I think.
These are the types of shoots I love, packed with creativity and fun. Bouncing ideas and growing them to produce images that match what we set out to do. Have the vision and deliver it.
My deepest gratitude to my friend Ziggi for being a beautiful, talented person. An artistic makeup genius with the most fabulous wardrobe ever!! I’m also pleased that his top surgery had been completely successful. Please follow Ziggi on Instagram to see what a special genius he is.
My thanks again to the judges for picking these images and why don’t you have a peek at the Guild of Photographers website to see what an amazing organisation it is.
M.
MARTIN CLARK PHOTOGRAPHY 