Preparing for competitions

Competitions are often great sources of helpful critique and learning how other see your pictures is key to choosing images for competitions. It might seem daunting to enter a photo competition wether it is a print or projected digital competition.

For a photographer starting out in competition it’s all too easy to fall in to the trap of “personal attachment” to a picture. Just because you got up early and braved attrocious weather to get the picture, if it’s not visible in the resulting image then it doesn’t add to the picture. Also if the picture is a portrait of a family member that all your family says is a great picture, you need to ask is it a great picture for someone not in your family. Ask yourself these two questions about your pictures and if the personal attachment is not clouding your view then you probably have a great picture.

Many photographers find it difficult to edit their own work and professional photographers often seek the advice of photo editors and other leading photographers for advice on their work.

To help you prepare for competitions we have written several articles on the website and to make it easy they have been collated here.

• Resizing your images for projected digital competitions
• Adding keylines or pin frames to photos for projected image competitions
• Which photo is the right one?
• An analysis of photographic judging