The awards ceremony was still streaming online, but Shannon Squires-Toews had stopped watching. She was talking to friends on the phone, saying how overwhelmed she felt by winning some top prizes in the Professional Photographers of America’s international print competition, often referred to as the Oscars of photography.
She almost missed them announcing her name again, this time as the prestigious competition’s award overall winner. She beat out more than 5,000 entries.
Squires-Toews burst into tears. Everyone around her, the friends and family gathered at her studio for a small watch party, started screaming.
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“I was beside myself,” Squires-Toews, 37, said. “That wasn’t at all on my radar of possibilities at this point in my career.”