The Documentary Photographer

Children are great at weddings. They really are. They get so bored. That means you never know what they’re likely to do at any given moment. That makes for great photographs.

There’s a problem, though.

It’s too easy.

If you watch a child long enough at a wedding they’ll so something remarkable.

Cute and remarkable is a powerful mix. Tons of documentary wedding photographs rely on this. Lots of mine do.

Worse still, these pictures end up being entered for awards, where they do very well. I should know. Photographs of children (mis)behaving at weddings have been at the heart of much of my award success in the past 12 months. My two winning panels at the 2010 National Photographic Awards featured children almost exclusively.

Nice, but in a wedding category, shouldn’t the focus be on the bride and groom?

Yes, it should.

Don’t think I’ll be handing any awards back, mind. I haven’t won nearly enough to start being dismissive of them.

Instead, I’ve set myself a rule for this year’s entries into the heats for the 2011 National Photographic Awards.

Absolutely, definitely, positively, NO children in any of the photographs whatsoever at all.

Except this one:

(c) Roger Overall 2010

There are many rewards in life.

A daughter’s goodnight hug.

A cheque.

A cheque that doesn’t bounce.

A bottle of wine from a client.

An award.

Last night the winners of the 2010 National Photographic Awards were announced at a gala dinner at the Ballymascanlon House Hotel in Co. Louth.

For the second year running my wedding photography won the award for Best Reportage Wedding Portfolio. I was thrilled beyond words, and today I have a very sore head to help mark the achievement.

I also received the award for Best Pictorial/Travel Portfolio. That really only made the head worse.

Yet while people were congratulating me and shaking my hand, I can only claim half of the credit. Professional photography is a hard career at times. Occasionally, it beats me down. When it does, Anne picks me up, dusts me off and gets me straight again.

Were it not for her, I wouldn’t have been standing on stage last night. Let alone twice.

She’s also very considerate in the morning when my brain feels like a pin cushion.

Best Reportage Wedding Portfolio 2010:

(c) Roger Overall 2009

(c) Roger Overall 2009

(c) Roger Overall 2009

(c) Roger Overall 2009

Best Pictorial/Travel Portfolio

(c) Roger Overall 2009

(c) Roger Overall 2009

(c) Roger Overall 2009

(c) Roger Overall 2009

The last day of 2009 brought a nice surprise.

While shopping for a suit, I found a copy of the January 2010 issue of Professional Photographer magazine with the results of its 2009 awards. I knew I’d been shortlisted in the Social Reportage/Wedding category, but didn’t know what had come of it. Turns out my entry, which was reproduced in the magazine, was commended. That’s jury speak for “Very Good, But Not Quite Good Enough”.

Still, better than a kick in the teeth, no?

Commended in the 2009 "Professional Photographer" magazine awards. (c) Roger Overall 2009

I should also point out that the results were recently announced for the European Photographer of the Year Awards.

I entered two categories … [drum roll] … and didn’t make a mark in either.

The next awards to be announced that are relevant to me are the National Photographic Awards here in Ireland. That’s not until the end of February, though.

Sometimes I feel like Homer Simpson.

Not just because I could stand to lose a few pounds, enjoy bacon and drink beer, but because I sometimes do silly things. Not intentionally. They just creep up on me in moments of mental fog.

Take this year’s entry for the Professional Photographer of the Year Awards here in Ireland. A lot of time and effort goes into qualifying photographs, from which a final panel of four pictures is chosen and entered into a particular category. It’s a process that takes six months. So you’d have to be some kind of numnutz to put in all the hard graft only to slip up on a basic mistake at the end. You’d have to be a real Homer.

That would be me.

Having pulled together a strong panel of commercial photographs, one I thought might just catch the judges’ eyes this year because it hung together so well, I discovered that one of the pictures had a big flaw. A super-sized honker of a fault, big enough for me to decide it would ruin the chances of the entire panel.

So what happened? How did a sub-standard image get entered into the preliminary qualifying judgings in the first place?

Long story short – the IPPA uses an online submission system (which, by the way, is terrific) and I uploaded the wrong version of the image. I should have realized sooner – like when the photograph received a much lower score than I anticipated during the judging. At the time, I put the score down to a lapse of sanity among the judges – something regularly commented upon by photographers. Now I can see they were right and my sloppiness has come home to roost.

Doh!

The final national judging doesn’t allow any room for error. When we get to this stage of the awards process, the stakes are high and only the best work will do. A minor imperfection in a photograph (or indeed a whopper) can undermine the chances of an entire panel, regardless of how good the other three are. So out went the commercial panel and a valuable lesson learned. Entering awards is an exacting process better undertaken by Lisa than Homer.

I’ll still go for the single image award in the commercial category, but that doesn’t have the same cachet. Portfolios is where it is at.

Mercifully, I didn’t have all my eggs in one basket. In fact, out of the three panels I intended to enter, the commercial one was the weakest. I also have panels lined up for the the pictorial/travel and the reportage wedding categories.  The latter is by far my strongest suit. The problem here was reducing a dozen very strong photographs down to a quartet. Artistically, I’ve had a great year, producing my best work yet. Anne and I spent a good bit of time this afternoon discussing various picture combinations for the final panel. We’ll know in February, when the winners are announced, whether we chose the right one.

A grab shot of the layouts we came up with for the 2010 IPPA/RSA Photographer of the Year Awards this afternoon. Only later in the day did I discover the flawed photograph in the Advertising/Commercial panel (c) Roger Overall 2009

The last preliminary judging for the 2010 National Photographic Awards took place in Kilkenny on Monday. 800 photographs were judged on the evening during a marathon session. I entered 12 images and picked up 7 Gold distinctions, my best return ever. Now the hard work of compiling my final panels begins. I’ll be entering at least three categories at the national awards, possibly six, but most likely five. You can tell I’m in two minds. Possibly three minds.

Anyway, here are the photographs that picked up the golds, along with some commentary.

An alternative view of a bride getting ready. This provoked quite a bit of debate among the judges, not least because its documentary nature didn't sit well with some of them to begin with. They also disliked the horizontal format. However, once they started to analyze the picture more and the story started to flow from it, including the religious theme of the cross, they warmed to it more, eventually agreeing it merited a Gold. (c) Roger Overall 2009

This is my daughter dancing in the streets of Austin, Texas, in September. She loves music and she loves to dance. The temptation was too much. Some people thought she was part of the act. What always makes me laugh is that she thinks she has to pay buskers in order to dance to their music. A straightforward Gold on the night of the judging. (c) Roger Overall 2009

My daughter brushing her teeth. Houston, Texas. I loved the light and the way it made a commonplace daily event into something almost heroic. At the same time it is a very tender photograph. (c) Roger Overall 2009

This is the most personal photograph I've ever published. Another one from my recent visit to the USA, it shows dinner time at my Dad's house. My daughter had concocted something she called "ice cream" (all of her concoctions are called ice cream) and Dad is being fed a spoonful by his wife. I loved the way Emily is caught in the light and the joyous expression on her face. For once, the ice cream was palatable. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Kids. They're great at weddings. They get so incredibly bored that they have to make their own entertainment. I'd been watching this little girl for a while and her boredom culminated in this photograph. (c) Roger Overall 2009

Another child picture. As an adult, we forget what it was like to live life at 4 feet high. (c) Roger Overall 2009

On their wedding day, the bride and groom actually have very little time together on their own. This was taken just prior to their entrance to dinner and for me it is all about the two worlds existing next to each other, each without knowledge of the other. And there's me with a view of both sides. (c) Roger Overall 2009