Jan Šmíd

Czech Republic - Asociace Profesionálních Fotografù Ceské Republiky

Qualified European PhotographerMaster Qualified European Photographer

Specialisations:

Landscape

Biography

What the author says about photography and himself… I haven’t been a photographer since birth as some of my colleagues often say with a pinch of humour and exaggeration. Nor is photography my “love at first sight”. To be honest, I don’t know what was in my cradle when I arrived in this world in 1979, but I am certain that it wasn’t a camera. I ignored photography for a long time, or perhaps I just occasionally pressed the shutter for holiday snaps. With the arrival of mobile phones with several megapixel cameras, I even applauded the fact that perhaps soon cameras would be obsolete and replaced by mobile phones. In those days all photographic terminology was totally unknown to me and I regarded ISO as a foreign three-letter word. In 2009 I decided that for my next holiday I would equip myself with a “professional” camera and I bought a so-called false reflex camera (EVF) made by Nikon. It was exciting, mainly because it had a “zoooom” and many megapixels. Along with the already mentioned piece of equipment I also purchased my first technical guide to photography and submerged myself into the mysteries of picture taking Towards the end of 2009 I exchanged the EVF for a Nikon reflex camera with the first dedicated 18–105mm lens. I bought more books and started on a journey of trying and experimenting; the journey was a difficult and thorny. I was constantly surprised that my photographs were not coming even close to those I saw in professional magazines. In the next two years I started progressing from ordinary snapping towards a more thoughtful approach and bought more lenses and other accessories. Since I had the equipment and theoretical knowledge from books, it was time to put everything into practice. In the Autumn of 2011, I went to photograph the sunrise in Bohemian Switzerland and in the car on the way I decided that landscape photography would be ‘it’ for me. In the Spring of 2012 I got bewitched by panoramic landscape photography and today I am dedicated to photographing landscapes. The large majority of my current photographs are made of several basic pictures (sometimes even dozens) and apart from classical daylight photography, I focus on night landscape photography and the photography of stars. Photography completely absorbs my time. I’ve started teaching workshops on landscape photography and I also own a photographic school (IFŠ). In my other photographic work, I am encouraged by successes in international photographic competitions, such as Tokyo (silver medal), Fine Art Photography Awards in London, Prix de la Photographie in Paris (2× silver medal), Moscow International Photo Awards 2017 (2× gold medal and 1× silver medal), the International Photography Awards 2017 in Los Angeles (bronze medal and 9th Honorable Mentions) and Australian The International Pano Awards (1× gold, 4× silver and 1× bronze medal). For me, the year 2017 was very important. I did succeed in the above-mentioned international photographic competitions and what´s more – the project of my photo expeditions has been running great (Norwegian Lofoten, Dolomites, Tuscany) as well as a unique project „Photo Harvest“ (a combination of photography and degustation of wines). Last but not least, I was accepted as a member of the Association of Professional Photographers of the Czech Republic and in the fall I managed to get the title QEP. QEP (Qualified European Photographer) is one of the most prestigious photographic certificates ever. It is granted by the Federation of European Photographers. The whole process ends with a very rigorous three-round assessment of a set of 12 prints. In recent years, commission ratings have been greatly tightened and success in landscape photography is really scarce. In 2017, I succeeded as the only landscape photographer from all over Europe and at the same time as the only representative of the Czech Republic. Only 4 Czech landscape photographers have been awarded with this certificate for the last 20 years. And I won landscape QEP, for the Czech Republic, after a long 12 years. But what´s more, I got the MASTER QEP certification in summer 2018! Master QEP (Master Qualified European Photographer) is one of the prestigious awards organised by Federation of European Photographers. Just top 70 European photographers out of 70k applications have received a Master degree for outstanding quality of work. To my great surprise, today I realise that inspite of the fact that I am basically an anti-tourist and prefer completely different sports from those that involve struggling up hills with a camera bag (which, because of its size I call a ‘wagon’), I like photography very much and landscape photography has become the real thing for me. July 2018 Jan Šmíd, Master QEP