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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Garlic in a wholesale market, Dihua St, Dadaocheng, Taipei
One of the distinguishing facets of the digital age of photography has been the technological advances and innovations. Unlike in the film era, where a camera body might be used for decades, these days it seems we’re upgrading and replacing bodies at a frequency never imagined a decade ago. While these advances are undoubtedly opening new frontiers in photography, all too often we find ourselves caught up in an endless cycle of more megapixels where the equipment specifications are more important than the actual photographs.
I’ve previously expressed some of my thoughts about creativity in a two part series entitled Musings on Creativity and Seeing. You might like to read part 1 and part 2 in conjunction with today’s post. There’s also a giveaway associated with this post so leave a comment to have a chance at winning. More on that at the end of the post.
To my mind, there does seem to be a turning of the tide away from equipment and back towards creativity and artistic vision. Photographers such as Chase Jarvis, David DuChemin, Chris Orwig and many others are at the forefront of this movement back to the soul of photography. In many ways, this is a breath of fresh air. Photography, as with any artistic pursuit, should be more about taking the artist’s vision and allowing it to be expressed than it should be about the tools.
For that’s all the cameras, lens, software and so forth really are. Tools. They are the means to bring forth the creativity that exists in ones mind and put it into some kind of tangible form. All the pixel peeping in the world doesn’t matter if the vision is lacking. Conversely, when the vision is there, a way will be found to express that regardless of the tools available.
So now it’s over to you. What does creativity mean to you? How do you express your vision and what inspires you? I welcome your comments, thoughts and ideas – let’s start some discussion on this. To give you a little more incentive, I have a couple of things to give away. A few weeks ago, I asked Steven Pressfield some questions based on his book The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles
Day 4 of the theme competition. Don’t forget that you can enter as many times as you like, the only limit is one guess per photo.
Fryer @ Yuanlin night market.
]]>Just a few days to go now until you get a chance to win something. So this is a good time to explain what’s happening.
Starting Monday November 24th, I’ll be posting 5-6 photos per week – 1 a day with Sunday and sometimes Saturday off. Each photo will be a part of a theme, and they will all be posted to the category of the same name.
The only catch is that I’m not going to tell you what the theme is. And that’s how you can win. The first person to correctly guess the theme will win the photograph of their choice from the photos posted. The photo will be at it’s native resolution or slightly larger, depending on the photo. To put that in English, it’ll be 8 by 12 or bigger. The winner will be the first to guess the theme based on the time stamp in the comments, which is set on Taiwan time (GMT +8).
The rules are simple. You are allowed one guess per photo. Leave your guess in the comments below the photo. I will not announce the winner or the correct answer until the close of the competition. This particular competition will run for about a month, with the winner announced around January 1st.
The included photos will have short descriptions – anything from a few words to a paragraph or two. Guessing won’t be easy. You’ll need to think a bit, sometimes laterally, to get the correct answer.
So on that note, I’ll wish you all good luck. Remember to check back on Monday for the first photo as well as another little surprise.
After a very busy few months doing a lot of photographic work for various agencies and clients, I now have a little more time to dedicate to this blog. So with that, let me make a little pre-announcement.
I have a couple of things in the works that are new, fresh, exciting and possibly a little different. The first of these projects will begin in the next week or two – I’m just finalising a few of the details. I won’t give any details about it now, except to say it will be interactive, and it will involve prizes. Yes, you heard me – I’ll be giving something away to some lucky person or people.
So stay tuned, check back over the next week or so, more details are on the way.
