In my last post I couldn’t believe that I was a finalist in the top 4.5% of the Shoot & Share Photo Contest and I’m even more excited to announce that I just found out the final results. I’m over the moon that I had two photos that earned a Finalist Award, and one photo in the Top 20%, and 2 in the Top 30%!  This was my first year entering the contest and I went in with zero expectations, because I’m still relatively new to photography. Once I logged in and started voting for photos in the various categories I was so overwhelmed at the high caliber of the other photographers. There were 12 rounds of voting and the more votes a photo received the better the chance of making it to the next round.

The way this contest works is that it is “Completely Free and Fair”.

A lot of times photographers with a HUGE number of social media followers will tell their followers to go and vote for their photos in whatever contest they’ve entered. That gives people with HUGE influence a HUGE chance to sweep the contest. But, this photo contest is completely different. It is totally free, nobody has to pay to enter, and you don’t have to sell tickets to get more votes. Photographers can enter up to 50 photos into 25 different categories. My name is never displayed during voting so only people who closely follow my Instagram even recognize my photos. And even then, since I like to attend group shoot-outs, up to 12 photographers may have taken the same or similar photo. That means that “each photo is judged on its own merit and every photo is given equal opportunity to be voted on. It is displayed the same number of times to the voters as any other, so every photo is in the running.”

This photo of cutie pie actress and model Journey was a finalist in the top 2.2% and ranked number 383 out of 41,321 other photos in the Babies & Toddlers category. And not only that but 61 people selected it as one of their favorite photos.  So amazing! A huge thanks to Journey and her sweet mom, Celina, for allowing me to capture Journey’s smiles and sass.

To put it all in perspective, the contest started with 583,150 photos. By the time the contest was in Round 12 only the top 2.2% of all photos remained and I was still in! Over 174,215 unique voters participated from 144 different countries. If you put all of that together, the voters spent over 15,809 cumulative days casting over 90 MILLION votes! How amazing is that?

This photo, taken at the Orange County Fair, was a finalist in the top 2.2% and ranked number 451 out of 18,262 other photos in the Creative Projects category.  Super excited that 33 people selected this photo as a favorite.

This photo of beautiful Aylin made it to the top 20%.  Thank you, Aylin!

This photo, taken in gorgeous Laguna Beach, CA, ended up in the top 30%.

And my photo of a dancer at the Dia de los Muertos event at Hollywood Forever Cemetery made it to the top 30%.

Thank you so much to my clients and models who have allowed me to capture their smiles and let me to tell their stories. And an extra special thank you to my friends who have been so generous with their time and advice and helped me learn so much about photography. And an extra huge thanks goes to my husband, Phil, and my kids, Savannah and Trevor, for being my cheerleaders and biggest fans!

But the biggest thank you of all goes to not only everyone who participated in the contest and voted but to the organizers of the Shoot & Share contest!

I’m thrilled to be a finalist and I’m looking forward to next years contest!