It was an honor to wake up this morning to the news that I had won an award from the International Society of Professional Wedding Photographers in their Spring 2013 Contest. (See the results and the other amazing photographers here.)
This contest is open to thousands of photographers from around the world and I'm amazed to be standing alongside photographers from Italy, France, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Canada and the US in this category alone.
I placed 11th in the “Emotional Impact” category with the photo below from Susan+Mato's wedding (you can see their wedding blog post here).
It's odd to be able to now say “Award-Winning Photographer Andy Stenz” — and quite exciting as well!
Andy just wanted you to have context around the picture you took.
I just found this post and wanted to let you know that I am the groom and this Photo is amazing for what it captures in several ways and I am glad others were touched by it.
As you see my Father-in-law in the picture was dying from cancer, in a lot of pain and had to make the journey from Kansas through the help of his former players (he was a high school football coach) as he was too weak and in pain to fly commercially.
As a result, one of his former players who is a pilot flew Merl from Lawrence Kansas to Milwaukee, however, weather stopped them from getting to Milwaukee and they had to land in Indiana the Friday before the wedding in a small town.
Because of the weather they were not going to be able to get out before the wedding on Saturday and would miss the wedding.
Somehow and some way as they were at the only rental car company in this small town a person returned a mini-van earlier than expected and that was the only car available for them to rent. They rented the car and got to Milwaukee late Friday in time for the wedding on Saturday.
So this photo captures the joy of his daughter’s wedding, the pain of his sickness, the relief that he made it and the realization and fulfillment of his last wish to make it to his daughter’s wedding……he died three days later.