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The International Pet Photographer of the Year Awards is the largest professional pet photography competition in the world, and not only was I asked to be a judge on this year’s panel, but many of our MTogs achieved successes of epic proportions too!
You can learn more about the awards and categories here.
The judging for me was a little tricky because I had three sets of international travel to complete between scoring and feedback, but all of the judges had similar juggling missions to contend with, so at least I was not alone in that!
All 16 of us, the judges, were trained beforehand on permitted feedback wording, scoring criteria and overall aims of the competition and then at the start of the judging period, we kept up to date via a gigantic Facebook chat group which allowed all of us to receive updates on overall progress through the mammoth 2000+ entries.
Each image needed 5 individual scores and 2 written pieces of feedback, and judges could easily abstain if they knew the image or had previously critiqued it or helped the creator. I had many, many abstinations, but scored hundreds upon hundreds of images over the judging period. I’ll cover more on this side and my overall takeaways inside the October volume of TogTalk magazine for members, but for now…
Onto the best bit – the MTog successes!
Everyone at Team Tog is so proud of all the MTog achievements in this year’s awards, but me especially so. As a membership, we set a lot of personal and professional goals at the end of 2022 to work on for 2023, many of which included entering competitions and being recognised for their entries. It’s safe to say they have absolutely smashed these goals out of the park!
The awards are made up of 6 categories, which include: Action, Creative, Documentary, Pets and People, Portrait and Overall.
Action
- Grace Fieselman – Finalist
View the full action finalist gallery here.
Grace Fieselman – Finalist in Action
Documentary
- An Di Prima – Winner
- An Di Prima – Finalist
View the full documentary finalist gallery here.
An Di Prima – Documentary Category Winner
Pets and People
- Gina Soule – Finalist
- Sandra Ferwerda – Finalist
View the full pets and people finalist gallery here.
Sandra Ferwerda Pets and People Finalist Image
Portrait
- Elena Marchi – Finalist
- Nika Golobic – Finalist
View the full pets and people finalist gallery here.
Nika Golobic Top 100, Gold and Portrait Finalist
Elena Marchi Portrait Finalist
2023 Bronze Awards
Their averaged score of five judges was between 75 and 79.
- Ainoa Sancho
- Alisha Anderson
- An Di Prima
- Anne-Laurie Leger
- Annemarie Visser
- Becky Huddleston
- Chohee Courtois
- Chris Knight
- Christi Baker
- Cindy Mayes
- Desiree Nickerson
- Elizabeth Boudreau
- Els Decoodt
- Emma Gould
- Gail Roberts
- Gina Soule
- Grace Fieselman
- Helga Jackson
- Janice McInally
- Josee Lavoie
- Kat De Laet
- Lucy Sellors-Duval
- Mary Catala
- Melanie Speer
- Michelle Dawkins
- Nicole Hrustyk
- Nikki McDonald
- Olivia Verplancke
- Raina Falloon
- Sandra Ferwerda
- Sophie Lillis
- Stephanie Dalman
- Suzy McCracken
- Tammy Strebe
- Toni Provencher
- Victoria Borton
You can view the entire bronze gallery here.
2023 Silver Awards
Anne-Laurie Leger Silver Award
Their averaged score of five judges was between 80 and 89.
- Ainoa Sancho
- Alisha Anderson
- An Di Prima
- Anne-Laurie Leger
- Becky Huddleston
- Chohee Courtois
- Christi Baker
- Dakota Berdahl
- Desiree Nickerson
- Elis Brown
- Els Decoodt
- Emma Gough
- Emma Gould
- Gemma Burden
- Gina Soule
- Grace Fieselman
- Helga Jackson
- Ina Jalil
- Janneke De Graaf
- Joan Tresidder
- Kat De Laet
- Kine Pedersen
- Krisztian Csalami
- Lauren Wang
- Liza Takacs
- Lucy Sellors-Duval
- Michelle Dawkins
- Michelle Petkovic
- Nicole Hrustyk
- Nika Golobic
- Nikki McDonald
- Sandra Ferwerda
- Stephanie Dalman
- Tammy Strebe
- Toni Provencher
- Vera Van Lier
- Victoria Borton
- Zoe McGrath
You can view the entire silver gallery here.
2023 Gold Awards
Their averaged score of five judges was between 90 and 94..
- An Di Prima
- Elena Marchi
- Nika Golobic
You can view the entire gold gallery here.
2023 Top 100
The top scoring images in the entire competition.
- Nika Golobic
- Elena Marchi
- An Di Prima
- Grace Fieselman
- Sandra Ferwerda
- Michelle Petkovic
- Helga Jackson
- Gina Soule
- Becky Huddleston
- Desiree Nickerson
- Kine Pederson
- Ainoa Sancho
- Kat De Laet
You can view the entire Top 100 gallery here.
And a special mention to our previous students who have moved on to different stage in their photography journey. We still keep an eye out for past members and students in all competitions, and will always cheer their successes!
- Renate Zuidema – Creative category finalist, Pets and people category finalist, Overall finalist, Bronze and Silver awards and Top 100 score
- Elke Braet – Bronze and Silver awards and Top 100 score
- Katie Brockman – Silver award
- Padraig Maguire – Creative Category winner
Take a look at some of the MTog images from this year’s awards below.
See you next year!