Vancouver International Photography Festival 2015

This year I received a CAPA bronze medal and third place at the Vancouver International Photography Festival (VIPF) in the open category with this pregnant portrait underwater image, "Ariel":

The winning photographs are being displayed at the Aberdeen Shopping Centre in Richmond from Oct 6-31, 2015. Make sure to check them out!! There is quite some talent.

First and second place winners were awarded to photographers from China and are really pushing our idea of what is a great portrait as well as having very strong aesthetics.

Thanks to both to Corina Mod, the talented model, and Ehsan Mahdizadeh for his assistance, equipment and expertise with underwater photography! This is the third year I've entered the VIPF. The first time I received a CAPA gold medal for "Out of the Blue", an image of Turkmen girls during Turkmenistan's Independence Day celbrations. Last year I received a gold medal and Best of Show for "Identity".

A previous version of this image won Best in Class in the Master Photographers International organization's salon this year. It also received a Prestige Award , as did as the other underwater image of Corina, from the MPIO. If you compare the images I did some photoshop work as after looking at the previous version I wanted to fix a couple things I wasn't totally happy with. The image on this page is the final version.