Nevermind that its been the better part of a decade since I won a contest. Nevermind the contest I won wasn’t against any top east coast surfers.  Nevermind the contest I won didn’t really involve other surfers period.  I won dammit.

What I did win was a photo contest.  Actually a reasonably big one, and I really thought I had no shot.  Its the International Photography Awards which usually has a pretty big pool of entries.  Although I haven’t shot much of it recently, I felt like my underwater work is usually something people stop and look at more than my other work.  The problem is that the only category for underwater was Nature Underwater.  I’ve got tons of surfing, models, and even product photos involving underwater, but not too much “nature”.  I decided to enter some of my stuff from my last trip to Tahiti – spent a lot of time shooting underwater angles when the waves were smaller.  Action surfing shots doesn’t really equal nature in my mind, but turns out its close enough in these judges minds.

The only problem is that I entered the Non-Pro category so I didn’t win any money (in hindsight I’m not sure why I did non-pro – think the entry fee was lower).  Apparently I’ll still be published in the book of all the winners photos and I get some sort of bragging rights.  Plus I’ve never entered a photo contest, and winning my first one gives me a little confidence for the future.  Who knows, maybe this will be the springboard that gets me to be the next Maplethorpe (google it).  Probably not.

So while my exile from competitive surfing still stands, maybe I’ll start remembering what its like to win again soon.