Reply To: Which rules do you want to see in photo competitions?

[Gabriel]

Great work! I made a promise to myself to enter every single competition I found last year so I’ve noticed some rules I like vs other rules I’m just so-so about. It also entirely depends on the flavor of the group hosting the competition, is it more art focused group looking for the most visually arresting images? Or is it a “natural history” group. Do they want maximum entries, or top images?

1. I think minimal editing competitions carry extra street cred, with all the tricks to prevent backscatter, multiple snoots and light filters, there are more than enough tools to make most images the photographer can conceptualize. I think allowing backscatter removal is what really cuts down or inflates entries for a comp, and it depends on the kind of images the organizer wants to display for instance a magazine doesn’t want any imperfections in the image where a museum wont mind.

2. RANT incoming: MOST baiting/feeding images are of subjects that are so overdone that they should be having a hard time placing in competitions anyway. I enjoy shark dives but I don’t pretend that there’s any groundbreaking images to be made. On the other hand there are several *very* prominent photographers that I am 99% sure are feeding their macro subjects because of the sheer volume of “picture perfect” feeding images that are quite simply too good to be true. If a photographer hangs around seahorses enough they’re gonna see some great behavior, but if you have 10 photographed instances of seahorses getting eaten in a year (exceptionally rare) vs every one dance/spawning/birthing (common enough but still striking) the ratio doesn’t make sense. Very hard to police during comps unless the judge is *very* attuned to the environment the photo was taken.

3. I very much enjoy competitions which limit the photographer’s overall entries to like 5 images, this makes them think about what is tops instead of just dumping 20-30 images and making a bunch of work for the judges.

4. Juried competitions are superior to any comp with a “public vote” period.

5. onerous file size requirements are usually no issue provided they are very clearly laid out in the rules. a.k.a don’t use the generic “5MB max” boilerplate competition rules that many competitions use, and then have an uploader tool that can only do 2MB!

-Gabriel

• This reply was modified 1 year, 2 months ago by  Gabriel Jensen.