In June, twelve of my photographs went in front of a jury of the Federation of European Professional Photographers in Sofia, Bulgaria. They came back with a title: Qualified European Photographer.
This makes me the first photographer in Portugal to earn the QEP in the fine art category and the fourteenth QEP in the country overall. Needless to say, I feel extremely honoured.
What the QEP is
The Federation of European Professional Photographers gathered in Sofia for its 48th qualification judging session. The Qualified European Photographer qualification exists to recognise and reward excellence among Europe’s professional photographers. It complements the national award systems, and over the years it has built a Europe-wide network of more than 1,000 certified experts who share a passion and a talent for professional work.
The bar is high by design. A QEP application is not a single strong photograph. It is a panel of twelve printed and mounted images, all representing the photographer’s chosen field of specialisation, judged by a jury of five experienced international photographers. The work has to carry excellent technical and artistic skill and, beyond that, the wow-factor that sets it apart from the rest.
This session, thirty-one panels were submitted and fifteen passed. Mine was one of them, in fine art, representing the Portuguese association APPImagem.
The panel
The panel was CORação, my ongoing body of fine art work built on one idea: that a place can be distilled to a single colour and a single feeling, where the colour is the subject and not the decoration. It spans years of my travels, from Mediterranean light to the peaks of the Dolomites, and a part of it was previously exhibited at the Biblioteca Torrente Ballester in Salamanca and the Lisbon Airport. The twelve prints the jury saw in Sofia are drawn from the same work.
Even in the era of AI
The judges noted that the overall standard rises every year, and that even in the era of AI, professional photography is still thriving. That is the line that stayed with me. They are right.
The craft still comes down to real places, the right light, and the hours it takes to be standing there when the two line up. A jury of five international photographers looking at twelve prints can still tell the difference. That is worth something.
Grateful to the FEP jury for the recognition. This is one of the proudest milestones of my career.
