Well Hello There You Awesome Flashers!

We are so excited to have you here and to have the next phase of Flash Masters development underway! What an absolutely insane couple of months we have had since launch. We cannot express how thrilled we are with the incredible community we are building. The first two collections of the Flash Masters Awards have been announced and the standard of entries and winners just blow our minds! We are over the moon to have such an insanely talented group of photographers, from all over the world become part of the Flash Masters Team.

I thought it would be best to start this first ever blog/news post with a quick review of what has happened since launch and more excitingly, what we have to come! In the first two months of Flash Masters we have:

• Signed up members from all over the world including, Europe, America, Oceania and Australia.
• Received over 800 entries into the Flash Masters Awards.
• Given out 9 Gold awards and 77 Silver Awards.
• Have almost 4 hours of in-depth  'How I shot it' interviews with our ambassadors. These include Scott Josuweit, Jesse and Moira LaPlante and Amber Henry! We have another with Arno De Brujin launching before the end of November. Members can view these in full in our Flash Masters Members Group on Facebook. The free shorter versions you can catch on our YouTube channel. Be sure to subscribe as this will be getting more busy through the winter months!
• We also have over 12 hours of entertaining photography chat on the Flash Masters Podcast! We release episodes every Wednesday and have covered all kinds of topics including: 'Things I wish I knew when I first started Wedding Photography'; 'Wedding Photography Nightmares' and 'What is in our camera bags.'
• We have our first member-submitted Behind The Scenes added to that magnificent page. We can't wait to see this grow each awards round. If you haven't checked it out yet you really should. It will definitely become an invaluable library going forward!
• Started using our social media channels to share the incredible work of our members to the world.

What is to come for Flash Masters?

Since we initially came up with the concept and idea for Flash Masters we knew that this would never be a 'let's build a website, sit back and relax' kind of adventure. We are so committed to making this the best photography community in the world and a place where those who love to use off-camera flash feel welcome, supported and celebrated. Before we even clicked the button to make the website live we have had a huge list of things we knew we wanted to add and develop as the community grew. Funnily enough, this page wasn't one of them! How on earth we managed to overlook a place to update and share news with our members, and the wider photography community is mental! We got it though so thank you to our developers! They are always so accommodating and go along with our 'ah ha!' moments and make things happen! So...here are some things to look forward to in the coming months:

• The education sections including Interviews and Behind the Scenes will become private for the community and move to the member zone area of the website.
• We will be showing off our members on the homepage with constantly updating 'Members Spotlight' feature which will link to members profiles.
• Live streams within the Facebook Members Group. We already have two lined up and in the diary including a critique session of members-submitted images on Wed 30th Nov. We also have a 'How I Shot It' special with Flash Masters Founder, Neil Redfern on Monday 12th December.
• The podcast intro will be taking on a fresh and international new feel with our very own members voicing the introduction. A big shout out to Chuck of CG Weddings who was first to step up and recorded an incredible intro. This will be featured on Episode 13 (released on Wed 23rd November). If anyone else would like to do this, the information needed is in the Facebook Group.
• Member and ambassador guests on the Flash Masters podcast.
• Our very first Flash Master of the Year! We are so excited to announce the winner in January 2023. We are just finalising the insane prize package with our amazing sponsors. Please keep an eye out for an announcement very soon with the final details of this. You can keep an eye on the battle on the Leaderboard page.

Thank you!

Finally, thank you so much to everyone who has supported us to launch this amazing community. Our ambassadors, sponsors and most of all our members! We are so excited to see where Flash Masters is able to take us all and we want to say again how committed we are to making this the absolute best community for education, inspiration and support. No matter where you are in your photography journey, we can't wait to help you take your work and business to the next level! Let's do this!

Submission deadline for Collection Three: Nov 30th 11.59 GMT