2020 AIPP SILVER LINING AWARDS
Designed to help professionals fill the Covid-19 void, the Silver Lining Awards (get it?) online photo competition included innovative elements to make entering not just about winning prizes.
An initiative to keep its members engaged through the Covid-19 restrictions proved to be a big success for the Australian Institute Of Professional Photography (AIPP). Earlier in the year, as it became clear the Institute’s regular print-based competitions – a key component of its members’ annual activities – wouldn’t be possible at either a state or national level, work began on devising an alternative and the AIPP Silver Lining Awards were conceived. Current members were invited to enter online, but unlike any other online photography competition, the AIPP built in additional elements to make the whole experience educational and motivational, as well as inspirational. For example, members were offered the opportunity to submit images for pre-entry critique by experienced judges – valuable feedback for any photographer. This enabled entrants to fine-tune their images prior to submission.
Another innovation was defining of the entry categories, organised under two broad headings of Classic and Creative. Creative allowed for the full scope of digital editing techniques to be employed, while Classic required the more traditional approach of a work created entirely in-camera and with limited subsequent editing. Within each of these divisions were five subject or theme categories devised to compliment the differing creative and technical possibilities. Additionally, two categories were created for Newcomers and Students, these finalists drawn from the main ten categories.
“The idea was, quite literally, to create a ‘silver lining’ out of the current situation,” explains Tony Hewitt, who is Chair of the AIPP Awards Committee. “We wanted not only to give members a creative outlet at a time when many wouldn’t have much work, but also make the whole experience much more beneficial professionally for everybody who entered. At the same time, we wanted everybody to have a bit of fun. And it worked brilliantly; the response has been massive with 3,000 entries, from which we selected 300 semi-finalists and then 120 finalists, ten in each of the six categories.”
Through the support of sponsors and trade partners, the AIPP raised a prize pool valued at $45,000 but, again, an effort was made to do something a little different. So, in addition to imaging products, the prizes also include workshops and mentoring sessions with some of Australia’s leading professional photographers. Tony Hewitt emphasises that it was a deliberate decision not to award an overall grand prize – as happens in the AIPP’s regular Australian Professional Photography Awards – and instead the accolades were evenly distributed, including awarding the first five places in each categories.