I love being a Long beach photographer! The gift of documenting people's lives has always been a blessing I am thankful for each and every day. I feel especially lucky when I'm able to reflect on my body of work, which, thanks to the competition Shoot and Share, I am able to.  

Here's the gist on Shoot and Share. It's is an annual competition of images submitted from photographers in 121 different countries. Image entries go up against each other in every category and are voted on by their peers. Ranking categories are based on percentages up to the final round. As much as 30-40% of the photos are eliminated by the first few rounds so you’re looking at the very best of the best: the top 3.5% of photographs! 

If your a numbers person you'll love this! The talent in this competition is incredible and the numbers are mind blowing! Last year, roughly 74,000 photographers participated, submitting over 110,000 images! Over 23 million votes were cast last year, blowing the previous year completely out of the water! But those numbers are nothing compared to this year! Over 225,000 images were submitted (more than double last year!) and almost 30 million votes cast!

I'm so grateful for the opportunity to participate AND I'm so honored that I get to share with others the life stories of my incredible clients. Last year I didn't get a chance to share results so this time I vowed that even if late I would share them both! Now I'm proud to share with you how others loved your beautiful children, family and lives!

Without further ado here are the images and how they placed. Please excuse the quality, they are screen shots of already compressed images from the competition page.