Mentor Me Programme
Mentoring for photographers
![Photographic Mentoring](art/Photographic-Mentoring.jpg)
When there is such a choice of representative organisations out there you may
ask yourself, 'Why The Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers?' To us the
answer is very simple. If you are a newcomer to the industry or considering a
career change then we provide several membership benefits to help you identify
your most needed areas of advancement and we assist you to plan and carry out
activities designed to develop your key skills and knowledge within your field,
as well as providing support whilst you apply your learning. The profile of our
membership contains many individuals who have enjoyed active careers in many of
the traditional 'professions' and to whom 'professionalism' is second nature and
we provide quality training and mentoring to all who ask and want to progress in
photography without prejudice or discrimination. If you are already in practice
and want to gain that all important edge over your competitors, then we can help
you too.
Our Mentor Me Programme is part of our Continuing Professional Development
initiative and is utilised by many of our members. Through this invaluable
programme our dedicated team of Fellow, Master and Grand Master Photographers
provide one to one appraisals of work and advice for progression through written
reports.
The Mentor Me Programme is a designed to be a cycle, with unlimited access
available to our 'Professional' level members. It is a process of submitting
images for critique, receiving written reports from the allocated Mentor and
then applying the new knowledge gained to produce further images to submit in a
cycle of CPD (Continuing Professional Development). The program is designed to
assist our members with preparing to submit for
Qualifications,
although some members use the advice given to improve their entries for our
Monthly Image Competition and Annual 20x16" Print Competition also.
Mentoring through this programme is available in a variety of disciplines
including (but not restricted to) Wedding, Portrait, Fashion, Illustrative,
Commercial, Wildlife, Nature, Travel, Sport and Events. Each set of images is
reviewed upon submission by Terrie Jones, Professional Development Manager, and
an appropriate Mentor is assigned based on the type of images and the
experiences and qualifications held by our Mentors. Once a Mentor has been
assigned the images are then sent for review and a report is written, this
process usually takes 4-6 weeks.
Once members receive their written report the onus is on them to take the advice
given and apply it to their work before submitting another set of images to us,
although this may seem a daunting prospect some of our Mentors do offer
additional support through this process by the way of email communication if
needed. As previously stated, the Mentor Me Programme is designed to be a cycle
of learning and growth, so it is advisable to members to submit subsequent sets
of images for critique once they have applied the advice given in their written
reports so that our Mentoring Team can continue to provide guidance and support
throughout the process of development. Professional level Members who use the
Mentor Me Programme as a way of gauging the standard of their work prior to
submitting for Qualification are far more likely to gain Licentiate, Associate
or Fellowship Qualifications on their first attempt than members who do not
utilise this free and unlimited benefit of membership.
In an effort to make Continuing Professional Development available to all our
Mentor Me Program is available to our Enthusiast and Retired members, although
restricted to two submissions per calendar year, and to Digital
members/non-members for a fee.
Submission Guidelines
To try and avoid any confusion in submissions for the Mentor Me Programme please
follow these guidelines when submitting your images for critique.
1. The submission must take the form of 20 Images in .jpg format, sequentially
numbered 01.jpg to 20.jpg
2. The images must be of one genre i.e. all Wedding, all Portrait, all Events,
all Sport etc.
3. Each .jpg file should not exceed 2000 pixels on the longest side.
4. The 20 .jpg files should be placed in a single folder and compressed (zipped)
prior to submission.
5. We require the zipped folder to be named as follows:
firstname_surname_mentoring_membershipnumber.zip
Please Note*
Please submit only one mentoring submission at a time, and to kindly wait for feedback before submitting the next set of images.
Once you have prepared your files for submission please fill in the Mentor Me
application form, once completed you will be transferred to our MailBigFile
upload facility which will send your images direct to The Society of
Photographers Mentoring Team for review. Should you, upon receipt of your
report, wish to have the submission considered for Qualification then a separate
application and the appropriate fee must be paid via the Qualification
Application Form. The submission will then be forwarded for considered by three
Fellows in the case of Licentiate and Five in the case of Associate and Fellow.
Submission Rules
- Entrant must have solely captured and created the original photographs, this includes all composited elements within an image.
- All digital manipulation must have been performed by the entrant.
- Any images that violate copyright, trademark or any other applicable law will not be considered.
- The entrant’s name, or any other distinguishing marks, must not appear on the face of the images.
- Images submitted for mentoring ideally should have been captured within 24 months of the submission date. Exceptions may be made in the case of composite images, where elements of the image were captured by the photographer outside of the 24 month time period.
- No entry will be eligible that has been made under the supervision of an instructor, in collaboration with another photographer (not including mentoring), or as a class assignment.
- Images need to be all of one genre.
- Any entry which has been reproduced from an existing photograph, portrait, graphic or any other artwork produced by another person is a violation of the rules and will no be considered this includes stock images and digital backgrounds.
- Entrants agree that any photograph entered may be used by The Society and or Professional Imagemaker in any of the publications, printed materials, or electronic media. Also the image may be used for promotional use by The Society, unless otherwise agreed.
- We reserve the right to: change or modify the rules without notice.
Mentor Me Advice
Licentiate and Associate form
Members can submit for qualifications or mentoring in just about any given subject
Suggestions for wedding submissions
Mentoring submissions will receive a report. Should the member upon receipt of the report wish to have their submission considered for Licentiate, Associate or Fellow a separate application must be made with the appropriate fee paid. The submission will then be forwarded for considered by three Fellows in the case of Licentiate and Five in the case of Associate and Fellow.
Qualification Submission Form
IMPORTANT NOTE: Due to the popularity of the Mentoring Programme it may take up to 4-6 weeks to receive feedback from your Mentor. At certain times of the year, particularly during the spring and autumn seminar &workshop programmes these times may increase by up to 2 weeks.
Please complete the Mentoring Form, you will then be directed to the upload facility.
Suggestions for wedding submissions
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