Why I Enter…

When I was named 2025 New Zealand Professional Photographer of the Year, I felt a huge sense of gratitude, but also a strange sense of stillness afterwards. Because the truth is, the award itself was never really the point.

Entering awards has always been about something else entirely for me. Something quieter, and in some ways more personal.

It started with curiosity. That first entry wasn’t about hoping to win anything. It was about trying to answer a question I couldn’t get out of my head: Am I actually a professional photographer? Not in a vague, self-doubting way, but in a very practical, professional sense. Was my work at the level it needed to be? Was I producing images that stood up beyond my own studio, my own clients, my own comfort zone?

That first year I entered one image and it scored a 72 or 73 (which was Bronze back then). I remember the feeling vividly – not disappointment, but almost relief. I had a benchmark. Something real. Something outside of my own opinion that told me where I sat.

From there, everything started to shift.

The following year I achieved Associate of Photography, and not long after that came Master of Photography. At that stage it stopped being about validation and started becoming something else, momentum. Each year I entered because I had to. Not because anyone was asking me to, but because I needed to know what had changed in my work. What had improved. What hadn’t.

And somewhere along the way, it becomes a bit addictive.

There’s a strange rhythm to it. The excitement when entries open. The ideas that start forming months before you even pick up a camera and the transformation through to your client work at this time. The pressure you put on yourself. The late nights. The constant second-guessing. And then eventually, the moment you hit submit, which is equal parts relief and fear. Because no matter how long you’ve been doing it, it still matters. It still feels personal.

Then there’s judging. That part never gets easy. You sit there waiting, sweaty palms, feeling like the walls are closing in – like you yourself are being judged, not your work, trying not to overanalyse anything. And if you are lucky enough to have your name announced as a finalist, there is this moment that is hard to explain to anyone outside the industry. You’re not just proud of the work. You’re proud to be in the room. To have your name spoken alongside photographers you’ve looked up to for years. People who, at one point in your career, felt untouchable. That feeling alone is worth entering for.

But what people don’t always see is what happens behind the scenes. The printing. The testing. The failure. The reprinting. The hours spent trying to get a skin tone right on a paper that suddenly behaves differently to how you expected. The conversations with your printer. The experiments with surface, texture, tone. The decisions that feel small but end up completely changing the final image. That process has probably been one of the most valuable parts of entering awards for me. It forces you to slow down and really understand your work. Not just how it looks on a screen, but how it exists physically in the world. What it feels like to hold. How it behaves under light. How it sits as an object, not just an image.

And that learning doesn’t stay in the award space. It filters directly into client work.

The way I shoot now is different because of it. The way I light, the way I finish files, the way I think about presentation. Even the way I talk to clients about what they are receiving has changed. There is a deeper understanding of quality that only comes from pushing your work through that kind of scrutiny.

But it’s not all progression and confidence. There are years that are hard. Years where you enter ten images and walk away with a single Bronze. Years where you question everything. Your direction, your style, your judgment. Those years can feel heavy in the moment, especially when you’ve put so much of yourself into the work. But looking back, those are often the years that matter most. Because they force you to strip everything back. To let go of ego. To stop chasing results and start looking at your work more honestly. They make you recalibrate. And if you stay with it long enough, you realise they’re not setbacks at all, they’re part of the process.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the years is this: they are not judging you. They are judging what they see. That distinction changes everything. It allows you to separate identity from evaluation, and focus on the image itself rather than what you think it says about you as a photographer.

For me, the goal has never been winning. When I first started, the goal was simply to benchmark myself. Then it became about distinctions – Associate, Master. Later, it became about being awarded a Gold. And at some point after my first Gold, I remember thinking maybe Grand Master wasn’t as out of reach as I always thought it was. Not as an entitlement, but as a challenge. Something to work towards. And now, having reached the point of both receiving Grand Master of Photography and being named 2025 New Zealand Professional Photographer of the Year, I can honestly say the goal has never changed at its core. It’s still about growth.

We all enter for different reasons. Some people enter for feedback. Some for recognition. Some to win. Some for confidence. Some just to see what happens when they push themselves outside of their normal work. All of those reasons are valid. For me, it has always been about pushing myself into discomfort on purpose. About creating space where I’m not just producing work for clients or commercial outcomes, but work that challenges me. Work that asks something more of me. Because that’s where the growth is.

And when I look back now, the award itself is just one moment in a much longer timeline. What matters more are the years of learning that led to it. The experiments that failed. The images that didn’t score. The breakthroughs that did. The constant cycle of trying, refining, and trying again. Winning is not the story. The story is showing up every year anyway.

The photo gallery below is credited to Sarah McGregor