25.01.12
Father & Daughter's Separate Photography Businesses taste joint awards success
A Father and Daughter who both run completely separate photography businesses found themselves in the unusual position of competing against each other in an International Photography competition - and then jointly winning the award.
Angus-based Nicola Hutchison and her Clackmannanshire-based father, Alan Hutchison both found themselves in the final round of the vote for the Annual Photography awards held at the The Society of Wedding and Portrait Professionals' (SWPP) Photography Convention in London.
Nicola runs a Family Portrait business called "Bumps Babies Beyond" based in Angus, whilst Alan runs his Wedding and Portrait Photography business "Alan Hutchison Photography" near Stirling.
About a week before the Annual Convention the finalists for the SWPP Members Choice Photographer of the Year are announced and members of the Societies are invited to cast their final votes before the final result is announced at the Convention's Annual Awards Dinner. It was a complete surprise for the father and daughter photographers to find they were actually competing against each other in this final round of voting. It was therefore a very tense moment last week as they both sat together at the Annual Awards event waiting to hear if either of them had been successful.
Imagine their surprise then to hear the announcement that for the first time ever, the voting had resulted in a three-way tie, and that both Nicola and Alan were awarded "SWPP Members Choice Photographer of the Year" alongside fellow photographer Alec Davies.
Alan commented "We were both absolutely gobsmacked when the result was announced and it was a very proud moment to walk on stage alongside my Daughter to collect the Award."
Both Nicola & Alan are qualified members of the SWPP who began their photography businesses within a few months of each other in their respective genres. Nicola is a mother of 3 young daughters and focuses on newborn babies within the first two weeks of their life and this was her first major International award coming just two years after the launch of her photography career.
Nicola says "My Father and I work in different areas and with different target markets however there has always been an element of friendly competition between us photographically so to be awarded a joint award is unbelievable, I'm still pinching myself"
Nicola's winning photograph was of little Layla who was just over one week old and had went on quite the journey all the way from the South of England just to have Nicola photograph her after her Mum had seen a Dundee friend's newborn images. "The pressure was on with this session purely for the fact that mum Hayley and little Layla had travelled so far and of course I wanted to do my very best, so for this image to be the one to receive the award makes it all the more special for me."
Alan's winning photograph was from an exercise in lighting that a fellow photographer had challenged him to emulate. "A colleague is a great fan of the photography of George Hurrell who photographed all the great Hollywood Icons in the 1940's. He had a very stylised form of lighting and at a photographers' get-together I was challenged to come up with a similar Hollywood look. The winning image was the result of that challenge."
The award was presented at The Societies Annual Convention which was held in London last week and was visited by over 12,000 photographers.
The award is voted on by the 8000 strong Societies membership and runs continuously through the year with a weekly competition. The weekly winners are then put through to the final and the members vote for the winning image.
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