If you’re a photo expert or just a newbie in the photo industry, photo contests are the perfect place to show up your skills and talent.
Also, you can win various cash, camera equipment, or other types of prizes.
Introducing your ultimate guide to photo contests and photo competitions and showing you various tips, tricks, advice, and events so that you could win big! We’ll cover every information from scratch for you to make your way much easier and successful.
Here we go!
What is a Photo Contest?
Photography represents a powerful medium of expression. It can be used to communicate positive, impactful messages about any subject.
Photo contests seek to inspire the creation and dissemination of such imagery while conveying the beauty and importance of nature and relation of people to it.
Photography contests provide an excellent means to determine the quality of your images.
Taking part in these competitions can give you significant wins ranging from cash prizes, camera equipment, or having your work exhibited.
The satisfaction of having your images posted on the website of competition is also gratifying even if you don’t win prizes.
3 Most Amazing FREE Photography Competitions
Natural Light Portraits
Natural light is a beautiful phenomenon that can be just as flattering as artificial studio light when harnessed correctly.
Light and shade are used to create mood and emotion as opposed to flat lighting, which is more limited as it is two-dimensional. The crowd rates all submitted photos once the submission period has ended.
Every participant has access to all the uploaded images in a contest where they can rate them for ranking purposes once the rating period commences.
On the Photo crowd, some battles have a judge. The judge chooses their favorite images and writes reviews on them upon submission of the pictures.
The judges make a final decision and announce the results on the same day.
Shape & Contrast
The use of form or difference in photography can be a unique and effective way of conveying a sense of perspective, depth, or even drama.
People at the shape and contrast photo contest expect you to provide your best images that put shapes and contrast to good use.
You can contrast various aspects of a photo, including but not limited to colors, comparing subjects, or even contrasting shades or light intensities.
You should also exhibit shape in its most broad context, including sharp geometrical lines, patterns, or even a clear light definition. Balancing these aspects is critical in trying to demonstrate shape and contrast in images.
Nightscapes
Autumn and winter nights are a great time to get shooting some nigh and astrophotography pictures.
Teaming up with Formatt Hitech, Photocrowd strives to find the best nightscapes out there. Your best night shot can feature here, ranging from Astro images to cityscapes, anything that is taken at night, outdoors.
The competition winners get Formatt Hitech Firecrest 100mm holders and new Firecrest Nightscape filters, among others.
Afterward, Formatt features your pictures on their website.
Related Article: 5 Best Tools to Check Competitors’ Websites
5 BEST Photography Contests
Baby Photo Contest
Do you want to display how cute your baby is?
Baby Photo Contest on Photocrowd avails you the opportunity to showcase your babies and get amazing rewards and gifts for doing so.
The baby photos are voted on by the various participants, after which Photocrowd, the winning baby, will appear on the website homepage.
Here’s how it works:
Your love for sharing favorite baby pictures can be rewarding. Entering cute baby photo contests give you this chance.
The games are very competitive but provide an opportunity to make some extra cash.
Every week, a ‘Baby of the Week’ is selected from the photo entries on the website. Ten of the ‘Baby of the Week’ winners will move on to the Semifinals and Finals round. Then the viewers will vote for the winner.
You can see the winning baby on the Photocrowd website and will win a grand prize.
Nikon Photo Contest
Nikon Corporation has held the Nikon Photo Contest International since 1969. They aimed to provide an opportunity for photographers worldwide to communicate and enrich image-making culture for both amateurs and professionals alike.
Over the last ten years, the environment surrounding image-making has dramatically changed with the extensive penetration of digital cameras with video capabilities.
The 34th contest was reconceived to adapt to this change, changing its name and structure. It continues to evolve, creating new standards, and providing new opportunities for discovery.
National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest
The National Geographic Travel Photo Contest draws entries of stunning wildlife images, people, and places from around the world. Also, photographers use this platform to share their vision of their global experiences.
Top industry experts review thousands of pictures to determine the eventual winners.
iPhone Photography Contest
For the past 12 years, iPhone Photography Awards (IPPAWARDS) has been selecting the best iPhone photographers of the year.
In fact, it doesn’t matter what gear, technology or other devices you use while taking photos since you still need talent and knowledge to capture an enormously great photo.
International Photography Awards
The International Photography Awards™ conducts an annual competition for a student, amateur, and professional photographers on a global scale, creating one of the most comprehensive and ambitious races in the world of photography.
How to Win a Photography Competition?
If you’re a newbie in this field or just want to improve shape your skills and win a photo competition, just go through this video below.
You’ll get detailed information and raise the probability of winning your desired photography contest.
Good luck! 🙂
Bonus: How to create a photo contest on Facebook?
Setting up your Facebook photo contest is more straightforward than most people think. Lets shortly take a look at some of the steps involved in making these contests.
The first step is to visit the Campaigns page on your Woobox account and click on the Landing Pages to find the UGC Contest template. Take a little time to make your promotion more attractive.
You can then proceed to embed it on your Facebook page as a tab.
It’s also crucially important to note that mobile users won’t see your contest. The reason is that Facebook doesn’t support mobile access to page tabs if you use the Facebook Tab option.
You may want to embed the contest on a page on your website. Mobile users can access your content outside of the tab.
Another option of encouraging participation by both mobile and computer users is to allow the users to enter the contest by making a public post. They can include proper hashtags and put them on your Facebook page’s wall.
You can explore more in this video and find out the best way to run a Facebook contest.
Conclusion
Photo contests present an opportunity for photo lovers to share their love for photography while making money in the process.
There are a lot of categories for photo contests, namely natural light portraits, nightscapes, baby photo contests, and Nikon photo contests, among others.
Don’t miss your chance to showcase your skills and have fun during the process.
James is the Founder & CEO of GurusWay.com. Majoring in Business and other life-changing sectors, James covers helpful content and shares his experience with the targeted audience.