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Here’s an interesting resource I remembered of – Ocean Art judges feedback, which they provide each year:
https://www.uwphotographyguide.com/ocean-art/judges
I know this ins’t a Natural History contest but this is interesting read nonetheless. One of the regular judges – Tony Wu – went on the judge WPY last year and brought his own perspective/preferences there.
One thing to be aware of we – UW photographers – tend to share an understanding of what a great shot is, which topside shooters/judges may not share. For wide-angle, your classic megafauna photographed up-close with a fisheye lens (distortion creating that ‘in your face’ look), with bright saturated colours, and a sunball behind, are widely regarded (by UW shooters) as the money shot. However, a topside shooter may not appreciate that sort of imagery at all. Renee Capozzola once told me her stunning turtles & sunball shots either did very well in some contests and fell early in others, where she learnt the beautiful sunball felt a little bit “too much” for some jurors.
This is a useful discussion for anyone looking to enter competitions, and I’d be curious to see how others approach their editing for natural history contests. We’ve got a number of multi award-winning photographers amongst TUC members (yourself included Gabriel), I’ll just tag a few of them to see if they’re willing to chip in (anyone else welcome to comment/complement too!):
@travellermike @jacobguymedia @Bill @yazid @catherine @jennystock @grace_underwater