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7 tips to follow when entering photography contests

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As a professional photographer, entering a photo contest can be a big decision. Entries often cost money (which you could be using on new gear or workshops) and it’s important to also consider things like the submission rights for the contest, jury makeup and prizes before moving forward.

Once you’ve found a contest you want to pursue, the next question to answer is how you can stand out from the hundreds, if not thousands, of other entries. We’ve rounded up seven tips to get you ahead of the competition and onto that list of finalists and winners.

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2019 Africa Geographic Photographer of the Year disqualified for photo manipulation

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Africa Geographic has just disqualified Björn Persson, its 2019 Photographer of the Year. His photo of an elephant named Tim won this year’s contest. However, the judges later discovered that the image doesn’t accurately reflect Tim’s look. It turned out that Persson overdid it with photo manipulation, so he’s been stripped of his award and a new contest winner has been announced.

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Photo stealing scandal – photographer Lisa Saad stripped of her awards

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Award-winning Australian photographer Lisa Saad recently found herself in the middle of a photo stealing scandal. After it was discovered that she had created her artwork using other photographers’ images, several major organizations decided to strip her of her prizes and memberships.

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The problem isn’t the photo contest, it’s us

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Eye-rolls, shrugs, and barbs greeted the $120,000 Grand Prize winner of Dubai’s HIPA Photography Prize. Malaysian photographer Edwin Ong’s photo of a partially blind Vietnamese woman carrying her baby was derided for representing yet another “poverty porn” contest winner before it was suggested that the image was staged by photographer Ab Rashid.

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Are wedding photography competitions fixed?

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In recent years I’ve been privileged to be on the jury for a whole range of photography competitions. These include single image competitions such as WPS International Excellence Awards, Masters of Wedding Photography and the Irish wedding photography awards (In association with Learning to Fly). And with a different focus, I’ve judged a couple of competitions which require a series of images to be submitted forming a documentary narrative. Thes were MyWed Nikon Wedding Photographer of the Year and This is Reportage Awards. I’ll create a separate blog post with my thoughts about judging these competitions and what I learned along the way. This post is really about competitions in general and why photographers should be entering them. And no, they aren’t fixed. They are just subjective (IMHO, please don’t shoot me!).

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The winning photos of Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2018 contest are out of this world

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Winners of the 2018 Astronomy Photographer of the Year contest have just been announced. This is the tenth year of the competition, and just like before, the winning images didn’t disappoint. The judges had a difficult task of selecting 31 out of 4,200 images from 91 countries. But the selected best of the best will take your breath away.

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These are some of the most beautiful wedding photos of 2017

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Junebug Weddings, one of the world’s most popular online wedding planning resources, has recently finished their 10th annual contest. Out of nearly 9,000 images, they selected the top 50 wedding photos from around the world. We have selected some of them, and it’s a gallery of strong emotions and wonderful moments captured on camera.

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These are the winning photos of Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017

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In August this year, we presented you with beautiful shortlisted images of Insight Astronomy Photographer of the Year 2017 contest. The winners of nine categories are officially announced today, along with the overall winner. There were over 3800 entries taken from over 90 countries across the globe. We bring you the best images according to the contest judges.

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These are the winners of 2017 National Geographic Travel Photographer of the Year

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National Geographic has announced the winners of their annual Travel Photographer of the Year photo contest. From over 15,000 entries from photographers in more than 30 countries, the grand prize went into hands of Sergio Tapiro Velasco from Mexico.

The winning photo displays a magnificent sight of an erupting volcano hit by a bolt of lightning. And even though this is the winning image, the rest of them aren’t anything less stunning. Take a look at the gallery of the winning images of the NatGeo’s prestigious photography competition.

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Photographer wins $20,000 prize for a ‘portrait photo’ made of pen scribbles and saliva

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Sydney artist Justine Varga recently won the $20,000 Olive Cotton Award for a portrait photo of her grandmother. Only, her work is not really a portrait, nor it’s a photo (at least not in conventional terms).

In Justine’s work titled Maternal Line, the grandmother doesn’t appear in the image at all. Instead, there are only her pen scribbles and traces of her saliva on a piece of film. And as expected, the fact that this work was rewarded the main prize sparked an outcry within the photographic community, leading even to some hate emails for one of the judges.

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