I am very pleased to announce that earlier this month I was successfully awarded a Licentiateship qualification with the BIPP (British Institute of Professional Photography) in the category of wedding photography![]()
The BIPP are the official qualifying body for professional photographers in the UK and their qualifications are seen as a benchmark for excellence, so I am extremely proud to have been successful.
The Licentiateship qualification is the first of three levels of qualification. The next level is Associateship with the top level being Fellowship. So, although I am delighted to have been successful with my Licentiateship, the work towards my Associateship in wedding photography starts now…!
The qualification process involved me submitting 20 images for assessment, consisting of 10 photographs from one wedding and 10 from ten other separate weddings. I submitted my photographs to the BIPP‘s Head Office in May and then had them each professionally printed on as panels ahead of the formal assessment day in York earlier this month. I would like to point out that Colorworld Imaging, who printed my panels for me, were extremely helpful and the quality of the panels was excellent, so a big thank you from me to Colorworld Imaging!
Deciding on which images to choose for my panel was very difficult, as was deciding which single wedding to choose for 10 of the images! In the end I chose wedding photographs which I thought were the safest bets on being successful, not necessarily my favourites or what I consider to be my best wedding photographs, but those which I thought were strong and would favour well in the eyes of the assessors. Some I knew were strong as they had already won awards but others were from recent weddings that I had only shot a few weeks earlier.
From the feedback I received I can now see that I didn’t always make the right choices in terms of image selection, but that is all part of the learning process and it illustrated to me the importance of taking part in a mentoring programme and/or gaining feedback from other qualified wedding photographers before submitting for assessment.
I am delighted to now be a fully qualified Manchester wedding photographer with with one of the UK’s leading photographic organisations. To quote the BIPP’s website “World recognised, BIPP qualifications are a benchmark of excellence” so I am very proud to now be able to put the letters LBIPP after my name![]()
Here are the wedding photographs which made up my panel of 20 images, the first 10 are from ten separate weddings and the second 10 are from one single wedding:




















by Neil
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