Awards

Over the past 8 years that Gehman Photography has been in business, Jodi and I have been attending our State Photography Convention each February, to continue our education, stay up to date on new equipment, network with other photographers, and keep up with current trends. If you are a new or aspiring photographer, and you hope to have your own business someday, there is no better advice I could give you than to join Professional Photographer associations. Seminars, speakers, competitions and just meeting new people will push you towards becoming a better photographer and business-person, and you'll learn the in's and out's of the industry that you could never learn on your own.

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As per usual at these conventions, we entered the competition, and we were fortunate enough to bring home a few awards, which we would like to share with you! :)

So to start off with, Jodi won first place in the category "Indoor Groups" with our family picture! One of the judges was crying, he was laughing so hard! They talked about this image for quite a while, and out of almost 400 images entered, one of the 7 judges picked this image as his/her favorite and we were awarded a judges ribbon! That's a first for us!

Secondly I won third place in the category "Portrait Albums" with Kelli and Cody's Fareway Shoot:

Thirdly, we won second place in the category "Wedding Albums" with Sam and Michelle's wedding:

and lastly, Jodi and I won first place in "Wedding Albums" with Christy and Hisham's album, which scored 93 out of 100... our highest score ever in the 5 years we've been entering competition!:

In addition, we were awarded the Fuji Masterpiece Award as well as the Don Knopp Memorial Award for the Highest Scoring Wedding Print or Album for the second consecutive year.

And if that wasn't enough, both Jodi and I were honored to be recognized by the association as Top Ten Photographers in Iowa for 2010, with Jodi at #4 and me at #6 in the Non-Masters* category.

We'd like to take this space to thank all of you who have encouraged us along the way.... we're blessed to be surrounded by a great cloud of friends and blog stalkers who keep us pushing to create something fresh and unique every day, and to our wonderful clients who inspire us with your love and your life stories. We appreciate you all! We believe that every good thing comes from above, so it's only right that we credit God for all of the good things that he's given. In the long run, awards are just papers, and pieces of wood if we don't keep our focus on what matters most.

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*Non-Masters basically means we haven't earned our Masters "Degree" in photography yet, something that takes several years of service, high scores in competition, and speaking engagements to accomplish. We've only started working towards that goal in the past year, so we've got a ways to go. :)