Photography Competitions That Don't Suck
- Many photography competitions suck. They charge high fees and end up giving the winners very little exposure. The prizes aren’t desirable and the cash award is low.
- There was a time when I submitted to competition sites like Shuttout and Photocrowd, but I’ve come to see them for what they are - places full of photographers who are all trying to win and don’t care much about the other entries. Certainly not enough to check out my website and buy a print.
- I finally realized that to get recognized, a photographer needs to get in front of people who love photography and art, but are not necessarily photographers themselves. They aren’t judging the work from a perspective of “Could I do better than that?” but “Is this a great artist and could I envision his/her work hanging on my wall?”.
- To get to those people, photographers must get away from photographer-only competitions and into the ones that matter. And from what I’ve uncovered in my research, there aren’t many that matter.
- I looked up which competitions matter, along with their historic entry deadlines and costs, in order to provide you with this list, sorted by deadline.
- January
- Jan 31 - Camtraptions Wildlife Photo Contest - Free to £59 - Starts August 1 for free entries, ends January 31 - all entries open to premium members until January 31 - bit.ly/camtraptions-comp
- February
- Feb 4 - Greek Photographic Circuit - €25 per category - bit.ly/greekcircuit
- Feb 15 - Nature TTL Photographer of the Year - £3 per entry - new competition; true exposure yet to be determined, but it got a lot of press - bit.ly/naturettl-comp
- March
- March 1 - European Wildlife Photographer of the Year - €35 - Must reside in Europe to enter - bit.ly/EuropeanPOTY
- April
- April 19 - Blank Wall Gallery Portfolio - €50 - submit portfolio of 10-20 photos - exhibition at Blank Wall Gallery in Greece - bit.ly/blankwall-comp
- June
- I will be adding to and subtracting from this list as I find out more, so be sure to bookmark this page to come back to it.
- Know of some other notable competitions? I’d love to hear about it.
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