While I do not believe in competitions improving my photography, or anyone elses for that matter, I still enter them.
Competitions have a place, they are there to advertise/promote products, on the other side of the coin they may advertise/promote your own photography. Peer recognition is also a part of the game to play.
Even the previous blog compeititon which required links from your blog to the competitons host is a form of promotion as it will rank them higher with google.
So my Sydney Opera House picture that I sell here is entered in the Sydney Opera House and HP competition hosted by snapfish. This is my House-In-Focus entry.
What I find interesting is that they request pictures that are not the usual post card type material, not their words but mine. Here are their words from the SOH site.

Lateral thinking, unusual entries and a fresh way of looking at one of the most photographed buildings in the world are what the judging panel will be looking for.

And here from the competition rules site on snapfish.

The judges Jan Utzon, Eric Sierens & Michael Mendenhall will select prize winners from amongst the finalists on a subjective blend of artistic merit, technical ability, creativity and presentation of Sydney Opera House in a manner consistent with its reputation as a World Heritage Listed masterpiece of human creative genius.

The judges will choose the winners from the top 10 voted pictures.
Well that is all fine but if you look at the voting so far you will see that mostly those post card type pictures are gaining the votes. If they are looking for lateral thinking then maybe getting people that have magazine/advertising photos pushed down their throats all day should not be the ones voting.
I'm not certain this was thought through all the way.
By the way, if you want to vote you will have to create an account with snapfish.
Promotion, promotion, promotion. I'd ask you to log in and vote for my picture, but that may take me outside of the competition rules. It would also be wrong of me to offer a free A4 print to each of you that vote for the picture. So I won't ask.
This picture of someone's sister or daughter must be the most honest picture in the competition.

Leave a comment

Comments:

No Comments for this post yet...

Leave a comment:

Name:

Email:

Your email address will not be displayed on this site.

Site/Url:

Your URL will be displayed.

Comment text:

Allowed XHTML tags: <p, ul, ol, li, dl, dt, dd, address, blockquote, ins, del, span, bdo, br, em, strong, dfn, code, samp, kdb, var, cite, abbr, acronym, q, sub, sup, tt, i, b, big, small>

Options:

Auto-BR (Line breaks become <br />)
Remember me (Set cookies for name, email and url)
Allow message form (Allow users to contact you through a message form (your email will NOT be displayed.))

Pingbacks:

No Pingbacks for this post yet...