Macarons (Ladurée) by Nick De Clercq

What a year it has been so far. After being featured on the PFRE-site, I finally dared to enter a photo (see above) to the PFRE Photographer of the Month contest for the very first time and believe it or not I won. I am the first Belgian ever to win the contest.

For those that aren’t familiar with PFRE, this means Photography For Real Estate, the website receives on average between 50.000 and 60.000 visitors a month. It is probably the biggest PFRE-website that is around.

The theme of this past February contest was “living room or family room”. Definitely a theme were there is a lot of great competition, which was also visible after a couple of days in the entry period. In the end there were 35 entered photos by photographers from all over the world, from the U.S.A. to Australia to Belgium and so on … You can still see all of the entered photos in the Flickr-group.

The winner was chosen by a Distinguished PFRE Jury, a combination of past winners and experts in the field, who all voted on the photos in 2 rounds due to the high number of entries. The Jury awarded my photo (see above) a total of 45 points, 9 points more than the runner-up.

What did I get for winning?

1. The honor of being recognized by my peers
2. An entry on the PFRE Best-of-the-best page that contains your winning photo and a link to your web site.
3. A PFRE post that features your business.
4. A free 1 year PFRE real estate photographer directory listing
5. An invitation to participate on the PFRE Jury.

And what did it do for me personaly?

It has motivated me to continue improving, learning and developing my skills and become the best photographer I can be. And maybe I can win this again somewhere in the future.

This photo was taken inside the Saint-Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican.

This photo is taken at the base of the Spanish Steps in Rome, Italy.

Taken in the tapestry-room within the Vatican Museum (all tapestries on the left are made in Belgium):

Pano 2 taken in the Vatican Museum:

Pano 3 taken in the Vatican Museum:

Pano 4 taken in the Vatican Museum:

Photo taken at the Hard Rock Cafe Rome. A cafe with a great atmosphere and the beautiful Hard Rock Cafe look but only go if you have time. It took the waiters 20 minutes in a 25% filled HRC to come take our order.

You probably already guessed it via my tweets or check-ins. If not, now you know for sure: I am in Rome, Italy.

Here is hopefully the first of many iPhone photos to come.
This photo was taken on my flight to Italy.

A “Meet …”-article was posted about me on Larry Lohrman’s blog. Larry is responsible for one of the biggest, if not the biggest, real estate photography blog in the world. Here is a part of the article (the rest can be read on his blog):

Nick became a PFRE blog reader because he ran into Jan Van der Heyden long time PFRE reader of Antwerp who’s story we featured about a year ago here on the blog. Here is Nick’s description of his story:

I am a 22-year old from Ghent, Belgium, who decided in 2007 (at age 18) to join a real estate franchise network called Engel & Völkers. I became a License Partner and … read the full article

via Photography For Real Estate » Meet Nick De Clercq: Helping To Spread The Use of Great Real Estate Photography in Europe.