BritMums would like to applaud Jenny Smith author of the blog Cheetahs In My Shoes for being awarded Highly Commended in the ZSL Photography Prize 2014. Here she shares with us the feeling of going from a passionate to an award winning photographer.
Just over 3 years ago, Cheetahs In My Shoes was born – a means of publishing the stories of the imaginary friends and raising some awareness about what it’s like living as a family with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. As I scrabbled around Google images looking for cute pictures of bowling shoes, never did I think (not for one second) that I was about to fall seriously in love – with my camera.
I’d been told I took “a good snap” and that I’d “got a bit of an eye for it” but being me, I smiled and said thank you; whilst wondering in my head, what on earth they were talking about?
As the blog developed, I realised I had more photos that I wanted to share – happy to show the outside world. Then I got ambitious and started a second blog, just for the photos – and then that got a bit much and everything got merged back into one.
All the time, the collection of images on my hard drive was increasing and I was more likely to have a camera in my handbag than my purse.
Fast forward to November 2013. On the last Saturday of half term, we spent a glorious autumn afternoon at our favourite place – Whipsnade Zoo, in the company of the wonderful Katie and her family from Life Through The Wrong End of the Telescope. Friends I’d made through blogging – in the first instance because we both lived with imaginary friends. The day was awesome on absolutely every level.
One of our final visits, as the afternoon sun was beginning to go down, was to the Hippo house where Hoover, the male hippo was on good form. In and out the water, wallowing and making a whole load of noise – the shutter kept on clicking and when I got home, there were a few that were worth editing and a couple came out ‘ok’.
I entered one of these in the ZSL Photography Competition 2014 on the spur of the moment.
I left making my entry until the closing date, totally unsure of whether my images were worthy – having seen the 2012 and 2013 exhibitions, I doubted it.
In April, I heard that one of my images had been shortlisted. I was stunned. Then I heard nothing and assumed that shortlisted was as good as it was going to get. Then in September, the invite to the preview exhibition and awards came – and I thought that I was officially Z list and was invited because no-one else could go.
4 days later the email pinged into my inbox. Your picture, ‘Happy Hippo’ has been awarded Highly Commended in the ZSL Photography Prize 2014 and will be on display at ZSL London Zoo from the 19th September. I shook for about 24 hours. When I saw that my photo has been turned into an installation 7 feet high, I stood there absolutely dumbfounded and had absolutely no idea what to say to the photography great and good who were complimenting me on it.
All from blogging; a day out with some of the best friends a family could ask for and some little part of me that said, yes, of course I can enter an international photography competition having never entered one before.
Jenny is, according to her children; part geek, part droid (having had a metal plate and 7 screws put in her arm in June), part mummy, part baker, part blogger and does quite a lot of ‘photographity’. She’s also a Brown Owl and a pianist.
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