A tremendous compliment to be a winner in the Portrait of Britain with this image of Son 2. Not my normal thing I'll grant you, and I've no idea why a few of the Crooners weren't chosen for the Portrait of Britain yet this was but HEY, I'm delighted to be in such good company with a great many heavyweights of portraiture in this high profile annual exhibit. Here's a link for some more info about it, via an interview 1854 CEO Marc Hartog and I did on Sky News Sunrise and here's a link to where you can see the screens upon which they'll be shown. There's a lot of talk about the negative impact of competition work and how they're just fundraisers for corporate entities, but everyone entering already knows this and makes their choices accordingly. None are ludicrously over-priced (though some are very expensive I feel} and they work great for putting what we do out there. As to whether they impact positively on career opportunities - that's for the photographer to work on as I can honestly say it hasn't increased my commissioning I shouldn't think, but I'm sure won't have harmed the chances either. The (free to enter) Sony Award has definitely got me in the room a few times, I can certainly say that. My advice is if it could work for you and you can afford to splash the cash, push on but don't let a rejection diminish the value of what you've created.