I am sure a lot of you know that our son Paul for the past 10 months has been attending Hallmark Institute of Photography. This intense program taught all areas from portraiture, commercial, fashion, aerial and architectural photography. We knew he was doing quite well and were hoping he would receive one of the awards presented. I brought a point and shoot camera that I still am not sure how to use. And on top of not really knowing how to use the camera, I left the extra battery at the motel. Really, how often do the batteries run down in those cameras. I was taking quite a few pictures before the awards presentation and a red signal started showing LOW ON BATTERY. Now what. So I turned the camera off and every time an award was presented I turned it on and focused for that perfect photo. All the awards were presented and his name was never called except for receiving an award for being in the top 10% of his class along with 20 other students. We were very proud and I did get a picture of him receiving that award. I put the camera away because I figured the last award, the prestigious Mamiya Award of Excellence would have gone to one of the previous award winners. It was explained that this award is given to the best overall portfolio. The judges were from the MAC Group and several commercial photographers. The award is a $20,000 ad featuring the winner with several images and a bio in American Photo Magazine. They talked a little about the student to be awarded but I can not tell you what they said. With my camera safely packed away in my purse, I intently listened to the name of the winner. It happened in slow motion. They announced a name PAUL – there were other Paul’s in the class and then came NORDMANN. Oh my gosh!!!! I could not believe it. I was so ecstatic and all I could think of was getting my camera to record this moment and praying to the photography gods to please not let my battery die. I was screaming and running towards the stage to get that once in a lifetime photograph. I was able to capture a couple of photos to share.

This photo is Paul and his girlfriend Sarah Christman with the coveted award.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 at 8:32 am and is filed under Special Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.