Photography Isn’t a Contest: why You Should Stay Away from Photography Contests

January 13, 2017 by Eric Kim 7 Comments

I wanted to write to you about photography contests — why I generally recommend staying away from them.

First of all, if you enter your photo into a contest, you suddenly become a slave to the opinions of others.

The most important person to please in your photography is yourself. Not judges. Not random people voting on your photos.

Do you really care about what others think about your photos? If so, why?

I personally care what others think about my photos. But the caveat is that I only care about the opinions of my close friends, family, and loved ones. To me, Cindy is my ultimate editor — what she ultimately thinks about my photos matters more than the opinions of thousands.

What photo contests are good for

Of course, there are always caveats to every opinion I have.

First of all, I think contests are good in the sense that they force you to edit down your portfolio, and choose your best work. In the past, when I submitted photos for contests, I had to choose only 3-5 of my best photos. This gave me a great opportunity to really sit down, and evaluate my work, and my favorite images.

However at the same time, entering photo contests added a lot of stress and frustration to my life.

I thought that I was a great photographer, and I “deserved” to win — or at least place. But the problem was, a lot of winning a photography contest is luck.

My experiences as a photo judge

Being on the other side as a judge in photo contests, whoever wins/loses/advances is based on luck.

For example, the sad reality is that the people who I judged earlier on had more time and attention than people I judged later. If you look at thousands of entries to a photo contest, you eventually hit fatigue. At the end, you are zipping through the photos a lot quicker than photos in the beginning.

Another problem — in past street photography contests I judged, I knew a handful of the photos, and the photographers. Of course, this creates a natural bias in myself — especially if I personally know the photographer, or am familiar with the shots.

Not only that, but the personal taste of the judges is such a huge determinant whether a participant advances or not. For example, if I love vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream — I will be biased towards vanilla ice cream.

The same goes with photography. Vanilla ice cream is like black and white photography, whereas chocolate ice cream might be color photography. If I shoot black and white photography, I might generally be biased towards participants who submit black and white photos. The same goes with color photography.

In life, there are no winners or losers

The Spartans prevented their youth from participating in contests and games where there were clear “winners” and “losers”. Why?

Because they didn’t want their citizens to feel the sting of “losing”, or the ego-inflation of “winning”. Even when the 300 Spartans died defending the city, they said that the 300 Spartans were “slaughtered” (not ‘conquered’).

We aren’t all fighting for the same pie in life

As a personal rule, moving forward, I’m going to try my best to avoid games, contests, or activities where there are clear “winners” and “losers.” Why? Because in life, there is no “winning” or “losing.”

Life isn’t a zero-sum game, with clear winners or losers. Just because I win doesn’t mean you lose. Just because you lose, doesn’t mean I win.

In life, we can all be winners. We aren’t all fighting over the same pie. Rather, we can create more pies, and create more prosperity, happiness, and good-will in the world.

So don’t be a slave to the opinions of others. If you plan on entering photography contests (or any contests), realize the inherent biases of the judges and the system. And if not winning photo contests disappoint you, I would just say don’t play the game.

Always shoot for yourself, and first seek to please yourself.

About the Author

Eric Kim is a street photographer and photography teacher currently based in Hanoi, Vietnam. His life’s mission is to produce as much “Open Source Photography” to make photography education accessible to all. You can see more of his work on his website, and find him on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This article was also published here and shared with permission.

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Gvido Mūrnieks

Alternative title: “A special snowflake backward rationalizing the fact that he can’t handle the competition with his peers”

Basically, this article is equivalent to a kid losing a race in Mario Kart and throwing the controller, while shouting “this game is stupid!”.
:D
- Dunja0712
  
  I just think he has a different point of view from us. :)
  Photography contests can pose a bit of a pressure. Personally, that pressure pushes me forward, but I suppose it doesn’t do that for everyone.
  - Gvido Mūrnieks
    
    “different point of view from us” is a REALLY nice way to put it. :D
    I don’t have a problem with that “different point”. But what I had a problem was with how disingenuously the article was written.
    I have nothing again someone who avoids competing with others, to save his/her own ego(although I think it’s not very healthy). What I have problem is, how a person tries to philosophize about his own weakness, in specific field, and tries to rationalize it as a way of life.
    
    Quotes like “In life there are no winners or losers” and “We aren’t all fighting for the same pie in life” may look good as inspirational facebook quotes, but are totally asinine and counter productive in the real life. Life is a completion(like it or not), starting from genetic selection – to most of our daily life. Competition and striving to be “the best” is the greatest of motivational forces in history of time. Competitions is how we grow as people and as species.
    
    In the end – I don’t look at competitions as something Orwellian, like author of this article does. Also, I think he should read up on stoicism.
simon anderson

I f you cant handle rejection then yes definitely think twice about entering as there will be a lot of losing involved, not because your photography is bad, far from it, the problem’s the standard is so high across the board form amateur to professional and the amount of photographers entering at this standard can be in the thousands so as said in the article I believe there can be an element of luck because it must be hard to choose a winner from the mass of quality entries.
On the flip side I’ve entered competitions from when I started photography and used it to my advantage, because after losing time after time I compared my images to the winners/runners up etc to see where I went wrong and how I could improve my imagery, I feel entering competitions has helped me get to the standard I am today, I’m not professional by the way just a content amateur lol, but if you can look past the haters out there who just put you down for the sake of it, take on board the constructive criticism of the genuine people then competitions can also be invaluable to your progression.
Also don’t forget the holy grail of competitions the golden prize at the end, after losing, losing and losing lots more my competitive side plugged away trying to improve to take pictures from previous winners who inspired me then eventually you work your way up the board, the last 16, then the last 8, then runner up, then on to maybe win.
After leaving behind the negatives of photo competitions which there are a few I embraced the positives and to this day I have won most of my photographic gear, including my Nikon D750 and Nikon D7100 amongst a lot of other things, these are things I would rarely be able to just go out and buy but things I desperately wanted, so I won them.
So even though I agree with a lot of things in this article, dont look at it negatively, be positive and let failure drive you to improve to get the winning picture :-)

Simon
catlett

Wow there are some seriously harsh reactions in this oped article. I’ll try to be less harsh but to the author, essentially the way you worded this implies you know what is best for everyone. You know what is best for every type of photographer and what their hopes and desires are for photography. There are people who, for various reasons get fulfillment from photo contests and that is right for them. Not for you or I to decide any more than I should tell them to shoot with a smart phone, with film, color vs. B&W, zoom vs. Prime, Nikon vs. Canon, etc.

On another but related note I would almost swear that you must be my mother-in-law using a pen name because despite a complete lack of evidence that she is the smartest person in the world she always knows what everybody else SHOULD do and has zero filter when it comes to telling them. :-)
Andrew Sharpe

I don’t enter contests for two reasons: first, because they charge so much for submitting photographs, and second, because the agreements often force you to give away the rights to your photographs. National Geographic is a good example of this, and there are many others.
Pete Woods

I would luv to enter a photo contest however I have to be brutally honest with myself. After looking at my own body of work I find I have a long way to go before I can honestly say my work is as such that I would have even the remotest chance of winning. Now given my current skill level and the fact that most of these so called contests charge an entry fee I would simply be wasting my money. Nevertheless I recognize that a reputable contest can be good test of ones abilities outside of an academia. In short it can look good on a resume’, yeah?