Today is an exciting day for me as I achieved the level of Fellow in accreditation as a Master Portrait Photographer in the Portrait Masters system. It has taken me 3.5 years to reach this goal and there were many ups and many downs.

The process is simple, you submit your work and it is judged by 5 world-renowned judges. It’s a tough thing to put your work out there to be judged and even tougher when the scores come in. I have worked with many of the top portrait photographers of today gaining knowledge, guidance and some pretty hard critiques to continue to refine and build my skills to the point where I am today. I have submitted images to three different competitions. They are the three most competitive competitions in the world. I look at what others create and I am humbled, and awed by their talent and ability to create such masterful and insightful work and mortified by my own all the same time.

But today it is time to savor my achievement, not to criticize the little things I could have improved upon, not to compare myself to others. I set a goal, and I reached it. I did it on my own. I did it in the early hours of the morning and into the late evening hours. I did it every day. I progressed and threw it all away and started again. But I kept going. And today I did it!