The Certified Professional Photographer designation empowers photographers to be more knowledgable, successful & technically equipped industry professionals.
The candidacy application fee is $200 and allows you two years to complete the exam and the Technical Image Evaluation requirement.
With on-demand proctored exam access, candidates can take the test from the comfort of theirr own home, whenever they feel ready.
No scheduling needed! The exams are located at the bottom of each module in the Credentialing Curriculum.
There are 6 exams that can be taken in any order, at any time.
(If you declared your candidacy before February 1, 2025, you are not required to take the Module 6: Introduction to Business Exam.)
The Certification Curriculum features:
After passing the Certification Module exams, candidates will be eligible to submit their images to the Technical Image Evaluation during any of the 10 evaluation periods each year.
Each submission period will be open for one week from 12pm ET to the following week at 12pm ET. Eligible candidates wil receive an email at 12pm ET on the opening day of the submission period as long as they are subscribed to Certification emails. (To view your email subscriptions, go to your profile > Profile > Subscriptions.)
In this part of the CPP journey, candidates are required to create three assigned images using the items from the Blick U List.
All candidates must use the same kit for the Technical Image Evaluation. The kit is approximately $42-45 and does not include shipping.
Using the five items in the kit and the evaluation setup guidelines, candidates choose from one of three lighting scenarios inside the Technical Image Evaluation Handbook to create the images assigned.
These set ups will demonstrate their understanding of key photographic concepts including depth of field, camera angle, exposure, lens compression, white balance, light sources and file handling criteria.
All images will be evaluated on pre-set elements including composition, focus, sharpness, lighting, camera angle and white balance. A successful evaluation will satisfy all elements for all three images.
There is no fee for image submission to the evaluation and candidates are able to submit images to the evaluation as many times as needed during their candidacy period.
The submission periods open at 12pm ET and close 1 week later at 12pm ET
October 7-14, 2026
November 4-11, 2026
Head over to the CPP Curriculum page for instructional videos to guide you through this final step.
Technical Image Evaluation Curriculum
And don't forget the CPP FAQs here, if you have any questions!