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Hi Robin,
Good question! The short answer is yes, being awarded in TYL would reduce your chance to place with the same photo in one of the big contests at the end of the year.
Now the long answer 🙂
I wouldn’t list TYL in the top 5 underwater photo contests, but it’s definitely a significant one, and there’s a good chance the jury of the top contests would have seen the winning shots.
The bigger the contests, the more the organisers are keen to shine by revealing unseen images.
Conversely, I’ve seen tier-3 contests quite happy to award images which had won multiple prizes in earlier years.
Some contests are very clear, such as OPY, in whether previous winners can be awarded, by providing a cut-off date (e.g. you can’t enter photos which have won XYZ prior to 01st May 2024, something like that).
In the lack of such precise guidelines, when I am a jury member, I definitely favour images which haven’t won before.
Since you’ve started underwater imagery recently, I’ll assume you haven’t won competitions yet, perhaps not even tried? If you want to build your profile, I’d suggest you try and enter quite a few contests, a pool of 15 images is a good base to tap into (see our webinar recording, on how to select photos for competitions).
Winning a prize in TYL would already be a fantastic achievement, previous awarded photographers include some well known names in the UW photo world. Plus the prizes are quite good!
Even if you don’t win, knowing how far a photo went in the selection process (contests offer varied levels of transparency on this) can be quite insightful, as to the ‘potential’ of that image.
Of course, you can use our club forums to gauge competition potential of an image (these won’t be visible to the public).