This past week, the Shoot and Share contest came to an end and the winners were announced!! We entered this FREE contest last year and because it sucked up so much of my time voting last year and I was feeling like I didn’t even have time to look through images to enter, I wasn’t going to enter. Until Logan kept bringing it up. He told me how much he wanted us to enter and that he would love to sit down and go through images for it with me. That convinced me. We took a few different days to sort through ALL of our images from last year and part of this year to enter our best 50 images into different categories. The total number of photos submitted from around the world was over 225,000. In 2015, 15 of our 50 images made the top 30% or higher. This year, we had 28 images make it to the 30% and higher, we even had one image place in the top 100 in its category. That also means, we hardly ever saw our images during the voting process.

As cool as it was to see how well we did, what was even better was seeing how so many photographers that I know spent time voting and cheered each other on, leaving Facebook messages letting them kn0w they saw their photos. This is a time when my feelings for community over competition really come to life. It’s such a good thing to watch others succeed and do good things. And the best part was seeing other photographers that I knew and to find their images, round after round.

My other favorite part to this HUGE contest is to be inspired. I felt so inspired looking through these images, voting, and favoriting the images that I loved. Because I favorited different images, I was able to realize first off, we need a dog.  I voted for and favorited so many images with dogs, it was ridiculous! Second, I realized just how much I love brides in the mountains!! Any brides want to head to Big Sky in Montana for a photo shoot?! 🙂 And last, I realized just how much I have a wanderlust soul. I loved looking through the images of European cities and images with the clear water.

I’m so grateful that Logan pushed me to enter this year because it got me onto vote and left me inspired to be better!! If you want to be inspired and see some beautiful images, check out this link- http://shootandshare.com/photos/

And no matter what kind of photographer you are, definitely take the time to submit your images for it next year!! Maybe start keeping a folder of your best images now. That would have been helpful 🙂

The top left is our image and it ended up in the top 10%
The top right image is from my friend Ashley!The bottom left photo is from my friend Meghan and she placed 9th in its category!The bottom left image is ours and it was in the finalist round!!The top right is ours and it too was a finalist!
The top right again is ours from Bailey’s senior session! And this is the image that made it into the top 100!!