So every year I enter the one photography competition that really means anything to me, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.

Every year I get the same message back saying 'Thank you for entering the competition this year. The judges have now made their final selection and I am sorry to inform you that on this occasion your work has not been selected for exhibition.'

But this year there was a slight difference, they also added this sentence: 'However, I did want to let you know that your photograph(s) did make it through to the second round of judging which included around 346 images. This year we had a total of 4,303 prints submitted into the competition from 1,842 photographers so the competition was very strong.'

So although I didn't make it to the final exhibition (dam you, it'll happen one day!) I did make it into the top 8% (someone on Facebook did the maths for me) so at least it's a step in the right direction.

So i'll just keep on trying and keep on submitting my images to them and i'll see what happens.

I'd love to know which image(s) made it though, but sadly they don't let you know, so here are the four portraits that I submitted this year.