Sharon

Dan

How about not entering a contest because you’re afraid you might win?

I judge a National Park service photography contest along with another very well known nature magazine editor. When we judge we are not giving high points to the same exact images, this helps create more of an average score for participants. Everyone has their own individual opinions of who should of won and sometimes it is almost political. Even winners might have wanted another image they entered to win.

After the points are added and averaged we have our winners in each specific category NPS does not have any rights to the images besides displaying the actual prints. NPS will ask for rights if they are interested in them. NPS might also ask for rights to other images that did not win.

All judges in contests are not the same. If you have the chance to see the names of judges you can look up their work and see what they like but it still does not mean they will be voting high on work that resembles their own. If the work of the judges highly varies from yours it might be discouraging to enter a contest. You might take into consideration the fees involved at this point and if it’s not much to lose or nothing at all you might go ahead and take the risk of not winning.

How many photographers have had the “I should of won” attitude? Plenty, it is egotistical but that pushes most photographers into competitions. An ego will put you in or keep you out.

Beneficially winners of contests can be connected with new people that might help them promote their photography to a higher level that was not available to the photographer before. Each contest is different and yes the fine print needs to be read because not all contests are the same. It would probably be better to create a list of contests that steal image rights then to discourage people from entering contests.

Some contests will provide a critiquing session afterwards, giving the photographers an idea of what they could of made an adjustment on. How many times have we went back to an image after we thought we were finished with it? If you ask me I would say too many times.

Some contests will look for personal style and not pick cliche images. Most contest winning images will be used for advertising and new work, new style and new scenery is hard to not be noticed. That expresses individuality.

Some contests will hurt a photographer’s feelings and even generate some decision making on going on with competing or not. The world is an unfair place and I have had my feelings hurt enough to where I do not care if I win or lose. It is the kick to our own ass that keeps us going!

Look forward to your next post about pricing and limited editions!

The idea that I have the most problem is this – “the very concept of art is inherently incompatible with competition.” Before I took up photography, my main artistic outlet was as a classical musician. In my opinion, competitions had a massive impact on my growth as a musician. The preparation involved, inspiration to delve into new repertoire, development of technique, learning to allow myself to take an individual approach to interpretation, exposure to the performances of other musicians and most importantly the opportunity to get used to the rigours of a live performance. If I had been left to my own devices, plodding through the examination system I’m sure that my growth as a musician would have been severely stunted.

As for photography competitions, they have allowed my work to be much more widely exposed, including the US and Europe, an audience that as an Australian would be difficult to reach otherwise. It is all well and good to say that as long as we shoot for ourselves, everything is OK ; however unless we merely intend to keep our photos in a drawer by the bedside, we all make photographs for people to see. Competitions have the potential to let our photography reach a wider audience. I don’t believe that most contestants shoot images to appease judges. When I’m out photographing my thoughts are not of shooting things in a certain way that will make it a ‘winner’. I just do my own thing and when a contest rolls around, have a look in my portfolio for any images that I think will appeal.

As for the best photo not winning, who really cares? What should a winning photo look like? Who knows? I suspect most contestants will have the common sense to know that these things are very subjective, just shrug their shoulders and move on. Indeed to go back to my musical analogy, brilliant careers have been kickstarted by the fact that certain performers FAILED to win a particular competition.

Warm regards,
Kah Kit

I think that winning certain contests could indicate that your work has reached a “certain level,” but it most certainly does not guarantee (at least not in most cases) that it is actually “better” than the work of those who might not have won. The flip side of this is that your work might not win but still might be “better” than the work that does win. I suppose that winning the right context is a gift that one might accept, but I think that it would also be important to keep a certain humility about the whole thing.

Regarding your point about contest terms, there are actually typically two problems. As you wrote, the contest organizers almost always acquire a permanent, cost-free, license to use the work of ALL WHO ENTER (not just the winners), and often the rights also extend to the affiliates of the contest sponsors – which could include agencies, designers, even co-sponsors. This is, frankly, outrageous. I would never enter such a contest. But there is a second, and possibly more dangerous problem. These contests typically also require that entrants (again, not just winners) agree to accept any and all legal liability for the use of their entered photographs… over which the entrants no longer have any control! It doesn’t take a lot of thought to see how this could go terribly wrong in very many ways.

I’ve pointed this out to several contest sponsors. Typical responses include “but we would never do that!” OK, then rewrite the contest terms so that they don’t permit you to do the thing you say you would not do. Another response is terrible anger and personal attacks on the photographer who points these things out. I’ve experienced this from more than one well-known national organization that would surprise you if I named them, and from a well-known photo blogger whose attach included emails from himself and an associate.

I think we do photography and photographers a favor by pointing out both the problems with so many of these contests… and those contests that are fair to photographers and may perhaps be worth entering.

Take care,

Dan