Exposing Birth just hosted another year of
Birth Photographer of the Year - 📸 BPOTY 2024
It’s been a moment since I felt so excited to enter an image competition, the last four years have been an interesting and challenging time to be a birth photographer in South Florida, to say the least. But I always see a strong benefit to enter at least one image, if not the max allowable submissions, to birth photographer image competition because the opportunity to learn from yourself and your growth is really there if you give yourself permission to see it!
After reviewing the 2024 rules with the Birth Photographer of the Year Awards, I was even more excited to submit my work!
What did it for me, and really sealed the deal knowing I wanted to enter the BPOTY image competition all boiled down to this one particular contest rule:
“Entries must be from original exposures made within the last 5 years of the closing date.”
Seeing that the 2024 BPOTY awards were permitting you to submit images from the last 5 years that I have been attending births in South Florida as a birth photographer was huge for me. I’ve been focusing on birth photography for 10 years now, so 5 years worth of home births, birth center births, and hospital births (including c-sections) means literally half of the 200+ families births I’ve captured in my career! EEEEK!
The reason this specific regulation excited me so much is because I knew I wanted to enter images from births from 2 and 3 years ago, but often image competitions are strict and specific - I have found that a majority of image competitions only want to see your latest work from the current year, maybe the year before if you’re lucky. But I had certain images from specific births I had attended in 2021 and 2022 - from home births with some of my favorite home birth midwives and doulas I love working alongside of in Delray Beach, Boca Raton, Margate and Lake Worth that were incredible stories that I just knew I deeply wanted to share in image competitions.
This was the opportunity I was waiting for!
Before I share with you the five images I submitted into this years Birth Photographer of the Year Awards image competition, I’d love to share with you what set this birth photography image competition apart from other birth photography image competitions.
Birth Photographers and Countries in the Top 20
First of all, 401 images were entered into this year’s image competition, which almost became a record breaking year! Back in 2022 there were 411 entries. This is one of the largest, best recognized image competitions for Birth Photography recognized globally!
As a fan girl of the judges panel and their process, I love that none of the images are compared to one another. The judging is hosted LIVE at 24 hours per day, until all images have been reviewed by the judges panel. But it’s not a stagnant judges panel. Numerous qualified and well trained judges rotate so that fresh eyes are on each image, giving every entrant the opportunity to be judged by an excited and motivated judge (not a burned out one! Bravo BPOTY!)
Every time a new image came up for the judges, they immediately began observing, reviewing and gauging it from a technical standpoint, entirely unrelated to the quality and craftsmanship to the image before it. This process has allowed each entering artist to be rated against themselves, allowing for maximum growth and knowledge. Watching the judges panel analyze my image of my client Dani and discuss why it would qualify for a higher silver award was one of the most informative experiences for me to learn how to bump my work up to the next level.
As a artist who is passionate about always learning how to do better, feedback on my work is a critical part of my growth and learning process. I started doing photography in 2007, 17 years ago. And to this day, I want to learn how to improve my work and try new approaches and techniques every year. That’s what makes a solid artist. Someone who is never 100% content with their work but instead has a powerful drive to excel!
I remember when I first joined the International Association of Professional Birth Photographers and entered my images into their annual image competition years ago, my main goal in participating in the image competition was to book more local clients.
I believed that winning an award in a global image competition would spread my brand awareness far and wide, having an uptick in inquiries and new birth photography client bookings just from entering an image competition.
Not only did I believe this would be the fruit of entering the image competition, but I also saw it as my main purpose.
Fast-forward 10 years and 200+ births photographed and I have a very different outlook on what I hope entering an image competition will do for my business and what I seek to gain from it.
When I was a new Birth Photographer in South Florida 10 years ago, I picked one of my top photos that received the most engagement on social media, usually a photo that I was very proud of, and simply made sure it fit the dimension, sizing and file name requirements of the image competition, uploaded it named it after agonizing over the title for hours, paid the submission fee and submitted.
I don’t regret the way I used to view image competitions, because realizing that you have grown after looking back at the last 10 years is part of the journey.
In the beginning of your career as a Birth Photographer, sometimes you need to do things impulsively, and it makes sense that when you look back, you realize: wow! your intentions are so different now… and that is all part of a normal growth process as an artist and photographer.
Now in 2024, the 5 images that I submitted to the BPOTY Birth Photography image competition were not ones that I had the highest engagement on social media with.
I remember seeing the five-year entry rules and excitedly going through all of my births from the last five years.
I hooked up my external hard drive and went through every image from births I attended at Baptist Health Boca Raton Regional Hospital with certified nurse midwives and OB/GYNs, I went through C-sections, inductions and epidural free natural births with birth doulas and moms laboring unmedicated using hypnobirthing, birth tubs, showers, twinkly lights, hip compressions and essential oils. I looked at my water births and vbacs I’ve had with the teams from Hollywood Birth Center and Natural BirthWorks Birth Center, I looked at birth I’ve had in West Palm Beach as well as home births in Stuart and Delray Beach.
Basically - everything from my last five years!
As I went through each client and their files of birth photos carefully, I reminisced on how special and meaningful every single one of my clients babies “birth” days were.
It’s crazy how well I remember so many babies names!
And the moment I see a photo or hear a clients name, it’s almost like I can see flashes of their birth story in my mind.
That’s something that a lot of photographers don’t talk about, when you’re going through your work from past years, a lot of photographers don’t talk about how it feels to go through past birth stories after all this time has gone by and reminisce on how much that birth story healed your heart as an artist, and how that particular birth story impacted your career, how being at that birth affected your personal life that week/month, how that particular client or her labor impacted your decisions as a business owner, how your client’s birth story impacted your spirit as a birth worker.
Going through your birth photos from past years, especially from the last five years, will take you on an emotional and spiritual journey that far surpasses the statement “submit an image to a competition”.
Photographers don’t talk about it, and sometimes maybe we are moving altogether too quickly when we are searching for photos worthy of competition submissions, but going through photos from 24 births a year for 5 years (like a dork I did the math, that’s roughly 20,000 photos) that process is just soul-impacting.
Some of us going through rough seas may absolutely dread the process. Others going through calm seas may too. But I find if you just drop your guard and allow yourself to surrender to the process, you can find a life lesson in there for yourself, that has nothing to do with the rest of the world, and becomes a meaningful ritual you do for the betterment of yourself alone.
This year’s Birth Photographer of the Year Award had106 silver winners - 26% of entries, 27 silver distinctions - 6% of entries, 8 gold winners, and that’s a mere 2% of images entered, 2 gold distinctions at a 0.5% of entries.
Those are some stunning numbers!
I am in awe of the entrants!
And this goes to show, an image competition does NOT need to have 1 Gold Winner, 1 Silver Winner and 1 Bronze Winner to show the world you are good at your craft. The max images you could submit to the competition were 5, and with 106 Silver Winners, that tells me, even if all 106 Silvers went to artists who won 5 silvers (which I know isn’t the case, as I was awarded 3 silvers only) this at the bare minimum would mean there are at least 21 outstanding artists world wide making a meanginful and profound impact on their communities! This does not even weigh in all the phenomenal images that ranked in the professional birth photography category.
But with 401 total entries, there are some 300 images that belong to at least 60 talented birth photographers and that’s really saying something about what birth photography in the world means in 2024!
Beyond medals and individual awards, this image competition also acknowledged the Top 20 Highest Scoring Portfolios of 2024. The judges took the scores from all 5 images each entrant who chose to submit all 5, and ranked the top 20 (in this case we had a tie, so top 21) ranking portfolios.
The Top 20 Portfolios belonged to entrants from 7 countries and 8 states
And I am so proud to represent my home state of Florida on a global platform, having been awarded among the top 20 portfolios!
Below, you’ll find the names and links to every artist from the top 20, and I encourage you to give their websites a visit, especially if they are local to you:
Rhia Mathlin-Cook from Victoria, Australia
Autumn Hutton from New Orleans, Louisiana
Bo De Saedelaere from The Netherlands
Leah Holscher from Melbourne, Australia
Megan Van Zyl from South Africa
Dunja Visser from The Netherlands
Paulina Splechta from Florida
Alexa Santaularia from Colorado
Joyhannah Torres from Texas
Anne Lucy Silva Barbosa from Brazil
