2015 PPOC-Ontario Image Salon Awards

Two years ago I took home my first ever award from the Professional Photographers of Canada for Best in Class in the Pictoral/Floral category of the 2013 Ontario Image Salon. Exactly a week and 1 day later, I was hit by a car crossing the street and my life came to a standstill. It’s been a long road to recover from such a traumatic experience, both physically and mentally. This summer, my husband and I went to Alaska to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary as well as settling my case against the driver’s insurance. As someone who was active and loves to travel, not being able to walk for months and having to put so much of my life and business on hold for well over a year, this trip was really cathartic and set me on a new path of hope for my future. Two images I took during this trip were entered in the 2015 Ontario Image Salon competition and both received Merits. I was already pleased with those results since I’d only ever received 1 Merit in the past. When you submit images (a maximum of 4), you can get Unaccepted, Accepted, Merit and Excellence. The criteria is tough to even get an image accepted. For example, this year there were 186 images entered and of that there was 1 excellence, 21 merit and 43 accepted. My next goal will be to one day get the elusive ‘excellence’ mark. 🙂

On Sunday September 27, PPOC-Ontario held its awards banquet as part of its annual convention. I was thrilled to see both of my images in the running for the Best in Class awards and even more thrilled when they called my name for winning the Best in Class Award in the Animal category for this image:

To say I was surprised when my named was called again for having won a Judge’s Choice Award for my other image, is an understatement. All 5 judges are allowed to pick an image of their choice so I was very honoured to have received the award from John Mitchell, MPA, a master photographer and someone whose work I truly admire. Thank you John!

I truly feel that finally, after 2 years, I’m back to my old self (with some extra titanium in my knee) but with a new appreciation of how precious life is and how much I want to live it to the fullest. These images were already special to me because of the memories they bring back but now to have them recognized by my peers is really amazing. I can’t wait to see what adventures the future has in store for me and the new images I’ll create from them.