Renee Bowen Seniors Ignite Model Competition

I wanted to take a minute and brag about my last two winners for the Senior’s Ignite Model Contest – Ally and Hannah.

My senior model team and clients know what the contest is, but some of you may be wondering exactly what it IS …. so I hope this will clear it up for you!

I’ve participated in this event since 2013. Now I am a leader with Senior’s Ignite, so I teach as well as shoot. I’ve been lucky enough to have had a winning model every year since then, which has added so much to my already amazing #rbmodel team.

My team gets free entry into the contest – for a chance to win an all-expense paid trip for three days, plus some spending cash AND a custom designed album with images from the event (as well as all the digital images).

It’s worth well over $6,000!

This is a national contest open to any photographer in the Senior’s Ignite community. High School seniors from all over the country are submitted for consideration. A panel of independent judges determines a group of finalists first, then narrows it down to the final winners the following week. Each year, the number of models selected is dependent on how many submissions we have. Up to this point, it’s been a total of 12 in the past, but that could change for the Class of 2019 group of models! We have so much interest in the contest (and the event) ….. so who knows?

This is not your typical model contest. The judges aren’t looking specifically for “the model look.” They are looking for an array of looks, but more importantly, they are looking for phenomenal STORIES from the submitted seniors. We want to help tell their stories. We want to know more about them than just a short bio. This is why we ask each model to submit their story during the application process. It’s how our judges get a feel for the models’ personalities – what makes them tick.

And of course, killer images provided by their senior photographer are also super important! 🙂

If one of my models ends up being a winner, he/she wins:

an all expense paid trip to the event (the next one is in Austin, TX in January of 2019)
two full days of modeling for styled shoots and photographers from all over the country
published on The Undiscovered
all the digital images shot of them over the weekend
a custom designed album of their images (my 8×12 Senior Book)
insane amount of fun and lifetime friendships with the other winners 🙂

It’s pretty incredible! My winning models have all had an amazing experience and lots of them are still friends – even now, years later, which I think is pretty freakin’ cool! Some of them say this helped them push through a really hard time – and that it gave them the confidence they needed to stay grounded in the muck of their senior year ….

The experience is different for each of them of course, but the running theme is that it is life-changing.

How cool is that? Seriously …. I love what I do, but the fact that some of my winners have had life-changing experiences becauseof this is just beyond anything I ever thought could happen – and downright amazing. To be a part of that is humbling.

I wish I could sum it all up in words … I do – but it just isn’t possible. This is one of those experiences that you just gotta be there for …..

Katherine Mendiatta (photographer and videographer extraordinaire) has allowed us to use the videos she produced of these events, so please check these out from the LA event and the Palm Springs Events so you can get a sense of what this is all about….. she has an incredible gift in telling stories visually through video.