I’ve entered quite a number of exhibitions over the last few years, but the Edinburgh International Exhibition of Photography is special for a number of reasons.
The exhibition is solely for prints, and while I like digital images, I love prints as I consider them the final product of the image-making process. There is no experience like holding a print from an image you have produced.
It’s one of the longest running exhibitions, this year being the 151st time the exhibition has been run. It’s truly amazing to think that this exhibition has been running since the dawn of photography.
Then they have one of the lowest rates of acceptances of international exhibitions, they accept only 202 prints as that’s all they can hang in their very grand clubroom which is a period townhouse, so this year with an entry of around 2300 that meant an acceptance rate of less than 8% compared to 25-30% which is usual for other exhibitions. Most exhibitions accept many more prints than they can display, Edinburgh displays every accepted print.
So it’s with good reason that Edinburgh is considered one of the most prestigious photographic exhibition in the United Kingdom, and why as I mentioned in a previous post I was over the moon to have won two FIAP gold medals and the blue badge for the best author.
The exhibition is held during the Edinburgh Festival to maximise visitor numbers, this has the unfortunate side effect of making it very difficult to find accommodation when the time came to book to attend the opening of the exhibition last Saturday. However, it was well worth it and I had a super time at the opening with my wife and lots of my photographic friends and fellow award winners, as well as finally being able to put some names to faces to people who I only previously knew by their super images.
The exhibition is open to the public until 1st September, and details can be found on the Edinburgh Festival Website. I am obviously biased, but I do think that they are a super set of images, interestingly the set of images selected are quite different from many of the other exhibitions I have visited this year, so do go along if you are in the area.
Much as I dislike being on the other end of the camera here’s a couple of shots of me in front of the gold medal winning prints – photographs courtesy my lovely wife : )
Here’s a shot of the awards themselves:
While I hope my photography will continue to improve for many years to come, for me personally I cannot think of any photographic achievement that will beat this. So please excuse any self-congratulatory tone in this post, but this means a lot to me and, in the words of Jack Nicholson, this really is “as good as it gets” :)
A big thank you again to the exhibition organisers and the judges, as well as the two models Holly and Victoria.
4 Comments
Excellent results which are well deserved – Many Many Congratulations – kindest regards Elizabeth xx
Thank you Elizabeth.
Behind every successful man is a proud wife and a surprised mother-in-law.
Hubert H. Humphrey
Thank you Mr Pope, and you are indeed correct.
I see that you do credit your phrases when they are not your own ;-)