Ten years ago when I started doing photography seriously, I just wanted to figure out how to take a nice landscape photo, take photos at night that weren’t blurry, and maybe make a little money on the side to pay for better lenses. Fast forward 10 years and I have the incredible honor of being ranked as one of the Top 10 Wedding Photographers in the US by Mywed.com. Haven’t heard of Mywed.com? Go check it out. It’s one of the most fascinating directories of the best wedding photographers in the world. With over 12,000 members worldwide it’s also one of the very biggest. And it’s not one of those elitist $200/yr-listing-sites, where you have to pay to get ahead. It’s completely free and completely open to anyone who is a professional wedding photographer. I know for me it’s a huge source of inspiration, and one of the few sites where I truly agree with 90% of the image awards given out.

While we were always ranked well on there in the past, the contest that bumped up our ranking into the top 10 was Nikon’s “I AM Wedding Storyteller Contest.” Check it out – They just posted the results here: https://mywed.com/nikon/. While we weren’t lucky enough to take the #1 spot (and win a sweet camera), we were one of the 35 finalists (out of 1,620 incredible entries) and will get a free printed wedding album of the set we entered. The results of this contest (along with some editors choice awards over the past year) were enough to bump up our ranking on mywed.com to #7 out of all US photographers. You can view the current ranking here: https://mywed.com/United-States-wedding-photographers/. Definitely something very exciting!!

But aren’t photography contests very subjective? Absolutely! One judge can love your work, and another think it’s mediocre. I’ve definitely been hurt at times, and totally flattered by the results in the past. That’s where mywed.com comes in. They rank photographers based on three things: editors choice awards, likes and comments from peers, and professionally sponsored contests. It sure isn’t perfect but it definitely takes a lot of the subjectivity out of the equation. You can’t just have a lot of your friends like your work and get ahead. You can’t just find one contest with judges that love your work. You can’t even just get some editor’s choice awards. You have to have an impressive combination of all three to really go up in the rankings. Is it the final say on who is good and who isn’t? Absolutely not. Is it an incredible honor to be listed up there with some of the best in the country? Definitely!

I’m incredibly humbled by all the support the wedding photography community, my clients, and my family has given me over the past 10 years, and I cannot wait to see where things go from here! Cheers!