Once upon a time I was fairly involved in a photography community then called Clickin’ Moms (now known as the Click Community). A lot of you all may be familiar with it! Not only do they have an immense depth of knowledge and participants and history of community building and also photography knowledge. To that end, they also host the opportunity for those who are interested to apply for the badge of honor that is being a Click Pro.

A number of years ago, I decided I wanted to take a stab at applying, to see if my photography had progressed to a point where what I’d learned I was able to demonstrate through my work. The main part of the application is putting together a collection of 150 images that show your control of exposure, that you creatively use light and composition, that you are consistent in your application of color, of grade and balance.

So I started looking at my work, trying not only to pull my favorites, but to pull together a curated and coherent set of photographs – photographs that represented a breadth of skills, a depth of understanding, that had flow, that adequately represented my work and that represented, really, me.

It was daunting, truly. How to sum up? How to narrow down and cull? If I recall correctly, my batch of photos started off tiny. I had a hard time pulling even 25 images that I thought might be “good enough”, and then I swung the other way. I printed a lot of them out to try to get the flow right – to make the movement from one photo to the next make sense.

I do think, in the end, I did it. To this day – more than ten years later – I still love looking through this set. It looks like I know what I’m doing – ha! I did get in and keep that badge displayed on my website to this day. Here’s my full set!

All the best,
Alison