Photography Competitions

Competitions in any area can be useful to help you improve your skills and this is true of photography competitions. The hardest part is to get over your fear of having someone judge your work but the rewards are worth it. The biggest reword has to be an increase in your confidence, even if it gets a little bruised along the way. You can reduce the chances of getting you confidence knocked by carefully picking the competitions that you enter.

There are many competitions to choose form each with their own advantages and disadvantages. You could start off at your local camera club or library, while there may not be any prize money your only cost should be the printing and you should be able to get more in-depth feed back from the judges.

If you do not want to be in person, you could always use the internet. There are many good photography web sites, some linked with off line magazines that have regular competitions with quite a few offering equipment as prizes. If a competition winner is voted in by the members of the site then the winner will be the one with the biggest following on twitter / facebook. If people can leave comments on your entry, remember that there are some very sad people that like to hurt others while hiding in hyperspace.

Big money competitions that have prizes of five figures plus attract many people with a lot of talent and usually have quit a high entrance fee to keep the numbers down. If you are going to part with your hard-earned money, you should look out for a few things:

• Does the competition have a history, so that you can see what standards your will work have to be to have a chance of wining.
• Is the competition run by a reputable organization, so that you know that you will be paid?
• Make sure that you are not giving away your copyright if you win or even just for entering. Even well known and loved organizations run copyright grab competitions from time to time.
• What are your responsibilities if you win or are placed? You might have to print and frame your work to a set size and be there on the opening night to get your prize. Not a problem if it is in your home town or nearby city but what if it is half way around the world!

Local competitions come up all the time, it could be the local paper, government, company or even a local band and they are usually free to enter. Local photography competitions usually have goods or services as prizes but if it is worth your time and it is not a copyright grab then why not give it a go!

It is always best to take a fresh photo for a competition rather than dig one out of your files and if you feel that your technique needs a little help then you could read up a bit on it, I would recommend:

The Photographer’s Mind: creative thinking for better digital photos by Michael Freeman




Composition: From Snapshots to Great Shots by Laurie Excell



Disclosure: many of the links on this blog are affiliate links from which I receive some money, but if you use them, you get the added benefit of knowing that you are helping support a fellow photographer with their own camera collection addiction, thank you.

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Photographers and Equipment

Have you ever noticed that when you get a few photographers together a big part of the conversation is taken up with a discussion about equipment. Sure, you will get a few snippets about technique, subject, locations, humorous antidotes and if you are lucky individual images. Photographers love for camera equipment seams to affect us all too some degree, this “camera collection addiction” and it plays on our confidence; “I would be a better photographer with that new camera” I could get the image with that bigger lens” “how have I managed to live without that gadget”.



Before the camera manufactures gang together and shut down this blog, let me say that the advances in camera technology have been great (keep it up) and some photos you just cannot get without the right equipment but it has made us all lazy. Do not get me wrong, I love technology but I think that it is holding many photographers back from reaching their full photographic capability. There seams to be an attitude of “the camera will take care of that, if not I will fix it on the computer and if I can’t then just delete it, after all it did not cost me anything”, well it has cost you your time and a little bit of your enjoyment of photography.



Photography is a great past time that gives vast rewards and like any endeavour the harder challenging the greater the reward. Like many endeavours, photography challenges you on many levels from learning about composition to the working and handling of your equipment, and carrying it all around. To start off, how well do you know your own equipment? When was the last time (if ever) you read the users manual for your camera or equipment, if you are not sure how a particular feature would benefit you then why not executively use that feature for a few days till you know it inside out and what it can do for you.



Probably the best way to increase your enjoyment of photography is to be forever expanding your boundaries and improving your skills, that also includes pushing your equipment to its limits. If you know that a particular lens has coped well in poor lighting then next time you are in a similar situation you will have confidence in your lens leaving you to concentrate on the image that your are creating. So next time you see a wonderful image why not push your equipment to its limit to produce an image as good if not better.




Disclosure: many of the links on this blog are affiliate links from which I receive some money, but if you use them, you get the added benefit of knowing that you are helping support a fellow photographer with their own camera collection addiction, thank you.

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Taking Photos on your Vacation

If you are like me then you are already counting to days until you can leave your job behind and head off to the sun for two weeks. The thrill of having new surroundings and photo opportunities every which way I turn, the only down side is that I know that I will not be able to take all my photography equipment with me as it is a family vacation and not a photography trip.



To help you decided what camera equipment you should take with you on your vacation you could research what photo opportunities there are at your destination. Have a look at the holiday brochures from the travel agents and check out the local bookstore. The more images the better, not only will this help in your equipment selection but you will also see how other photographers have tackled the subject.



The internet is also a very good place to find images of the place you are going to on vacation, just type your destination and the word ‘photo’ into your search engine. If you are looking to make some money from your vacation photos then have a look at photo stock site Fotolia" or macro photo stock site Shutterstock " this will also show you the type of images that sell.



I would strongly recommend that you do not take any equipment with you on your vacation that you do not fully understand how to use, the last thing you want to be doing is reading the users manual rather than relaxing at the bar / pool. That would also go for any photo technique that you might want to try, better to do that at home rather than getting frustrated on your vacation. With that in mind why not fresh up on all your photography techniques before you go, two great books for that are Life Guide to digital photography by Jim McNally and Betterphoto Basics by Jim Miotke.





One last thing, remember it is your vacation and you are there to relax and have fun.

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The Next Level

In my last few posts, I have written about the technicalities or the basic rules of photography, composition, lead lines and so on. Now I would like to take the next step and try to write about what makes a good photo good. This is impossible, for a number of reasons, we all see, colour in different ways and we all like different types of images, with that in mind the main person that you have to please with your images is your self.

This is a very simple concept; create images that you like, even passionate about. This will add quality to an image that everyone will see even if they do not know why, your passion and knowledge of a subject will show in your image. Many artists of all types when starting out crave appreciation or approval and they only start to advance their art when they stop trying to please other people.

Choosing not to follow the rules of composition is not the same as not knowing about composition, yes you may get lucky but most likely you will not. The same is true about finding images that you like, you could take thousands upon thousands of photos and you may get lucky, another way would be to learn how to read an image and then look at the images of photographers that are passionate about their work. Do not just limit your self to photographers but look at all types of artists work, see if they have followed the rules of composition or have they broken the rules and if so does it work for you.

The more you look at different artists work the more ideas you will have for your own work, do not copy other peoples work to pass off as your own. What you are aiming for is to take your first steps to building your own style, do you want people to look at your image and say that it is in the style of or a copy of some famous photographer or would you like them to say that it is your image and that you are the famous photographer. that is what building your own style is all about.

If you would like to know more about taking your photography to the next level then why not have a look at George Barr’s book ‘Take your photography to the next level’ as he is a much better writer and photographer than I am.



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Depth of field (DOF)

Depth of field is the term for how much will be in focus, sharp or blurry in a photo.
Many people like to have everything in focus in a photograph; this is down to personal preference and subject matter. Zooming in or out lets you chose how much surroundings to the left and right you include with your subject, depth of field lets you chose how much surroundings you keep (in focus) in front and behind the subject.



First off, there is no right or wrong, it is you photo and it is up to you how much you have in focus or not. If you are photographing a beautiful landscape you might want everything in focus from your feet too the horizon but if you are photographing a person in a busy street you might want just that person and not all the other people so that the viewer of the photo knows who the subject is.



So how do you control the depth of field? Well, by using the f-numbers or f-stops, these numbers let you know what the aperture is set at. The aperture is a hole in the lens that opens and closes a bit like the iris in your eye, the bigger the f-number the smaller the hole which gives you more DOF, the smaller the f-number the bigger the hole which gives you less DOF. So big f-number = big DOF and small f-number = small DOF.



As the aperture opens and closes it will let more or less light through the lens, so with a large f-number you will get less light and so you will need a longer shutter speed, and the reverse is true of a small f-number.



It can be hard to see the effects of DOF on the display on the back of your camera, so until you know what results your camera will give you at what setting I would advise you to take a few photos at different f-number and you might come up with a great photo.



Photography is all about trying new ways of doing things and above all have fun.