Classical Chinese bicycle

Photography competitions are widespread these days, and as long as you keep a few points in mind, can be good ways of both getting exposure for your work and getting feedback on it. Winning, or even making the final of a large, international competition gets your name and photographs in front of a large audience that often includes members of the media and photography industry. Conversely, doing well in a small, local area competition can often be a good way to interact with other photographers in your local community.

Some photo competitions are good, some are neutral and some are terrible. You should aim to only enter the good, legitimate ones, or perhaps the neutral ones if it’s a small, local competition. Avoid the terrible ones at all costs.

How do you identify a terrible photography competition? Firstly, it’ll probably be a thinly disguised rights grab. Whenever I come across a photography competition, the very first thing I do is read the fine print. It’ll usually be called Terms and Conditions, or something similar, and you’re looking for some kind of variation of the following.

Uploading a Submission constitutes entrant’s consent to give Sponsor a royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, create derivative works from, and display such submissions in whole or in part, on a worldwide basis, and to incorporate it into other works, in any form, media or technology now known or later developed, including for any lawful purpose, including without limitation, for advertising, promotional or marketing purposes. If requested, entrant will sign any documentation that may be required for Sponsor or its designees to make use of the non-exclusive rights entrant is granting to use the Submission

If you see text such as this, it’s in you best interests to not enter the competition. The competition organizers are essentially requiring you to hand over all rights to your photograph so that they can do whatever they want with it. If they want to run a full page ad, or use it as a magazine cover or a billboard, they can. Not only won’t you see any licensing fees, they don’t even have to mention your name.

Good competitions are the ones you want. Look at who is judging the competiion – it’s quite possible that the judges are highly respected and influential in the photographic industry. Look at previous winners. A little Googling will probably turn up a blog or some other contact method, so you could even consider a short, polite email asking them about the competition. Look at the prizes. Depending on your needs and intentions, a photo competition that comes with a highly valuable material prize may be less desirable than something that comes with prestige.

When deciding on which photograph to enter, choose images that reflect you and your style It’s impossible to try and guess what the judges will like, so enter the work you like. This is more valuable to you as it will be your everyday shooting style that is being judged.

Finally, it should go without saying that you need to check the submission guidelines. Make sure there are no restrictions due to your location, and that you submit images in the correct size and format. Good luck.

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