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Hi @ellie , our seahorses are so cute! I love the way the tail on this one is curled around the sponge, and I like that angle is nice and low. I think if shooting this particular subject for competition, it could be good to try to fill the frame more and to aim for sharper focus. Competition judges seem to love when an image ‘tells a story’, and sometimes composition can help to do that. Sometimes with a particular subject, it’s good to look at winning galleries of the subjects you’re shooting and ask ‘what story did each of these images tell?’ I guess we’re trying to get our competition pictures to ‘say something’ that judges and viewers haven’t seen before by shooting the subject in new and interesting way. I once read that ‘shooting a common subject in an interesting way’ will beat ‘shooting an interesting subject in a common way’ every time. Sometimes when I’m shooting a subject I’ll tell myself to take 3 pictures of it: a ‘boring’ shot, an ‘interesting’ shot, and a ‘wow factor’ shot. I try to alter my angle, composition and lighting to move through those challenges until I find a shot that tells a story (which doesn’t always happen). I find that makes me stretch how I’m approach the subject. Sometimes I manage to take a lovely shot, but if it doesn’t communicate a clear story, I don’t enter it into competitions as I don’t believe it will compete successfully against the images that do. I find the story with seahorses can come from a) personality (eye contact, expression), b) behaviour, c) really engaging backgrounds / habitats that create visual interest. It took me a really long time to have any competition success with seahorses, but they are so worth persevering with!