Photography Competition Rules (in effect November 17th 2023)

Our photography competition is a monthly event. To participate, all you have to do is upload your photo here on the competition page. Some information you should know:

1. You may submit no more than two entries in each monthly competition. If you put in three or more, then none of the entries will be qualified.

2. To submit a photo, just upload it here on the competition page - you may add a comment or information about the image, if you wish, but it is not required and the comments are not part of the judging.

3. You must name your file according to the title you have given your artwork. Please do not use your name in the filename because the filenames are visible to the judges. So, an example of how an entry of a red ant, should be named is … red_ant.jpg TIP: a clever, interesting title can be used as a tiebreaker.

4. You may use compositing techniques in entry pictures, but you MUST disclose that by checking the compositing-checkbox while using the upload form. As of December 1, 2022 any undisclosed composited submissions will result in disqualification of the photographer and his/her other entry from that month’s competition. A second offense will result in disqualification and the photographer will not be able to submit any entries to competitions for a period of 12 moths.

5. If you say your photograph is suitable for the theme, then that’s good enough, but if I don’t understand how it fits, I will be unlikely to score it very highly.

6. If you win, your image will be front and center on my home page for a whole month (maybe not the level of fame Andy Warhol was thinking about, but better than nothing).

7. The Results Video will be released a few days after the end of the month (on Patreon and on YouTube)

8. It is expected that you submit only images that were taken by you and that they were taken for this competition, or in anticipation of it.

9. About the only thing that will get me bent out of shape is if I get wind of anyone making comments to or about another participant, or their work, that are hateful or hurtful. We don’t do hateful or hurtful on this site, on Discord, on my YouTube channel or anywhere that I have a say in it. Be nice and if you have a legitimate beef with anything, talk to me, a member of the Advisory Board on Patreon or one of the fine Moderators on Discord, and let us deal with it.

10. That is already too many rules - just remember that we are all adults and we are here because we love our photography, so let’s all just behave like intelligent grownups, and follow the rules we already have in our heads. They are almost always right.

A word about judging the photography competition…

I take this far more seriously than my tone in the Results Videos may suggest. I spend a lot of time carefully examining each entry and assigning a numeric score in each of several categories. I then go back through all the entries and satisfy myself that the scores are appropriate and fairly applied. I then use the scores to rank the entries and depending on the points spread, I will set a cutoff for places and for honorable mentions. Scoring is unavoidably subjective, and this is why I have recently started presenting all the honorable mentions and placing images in a video at the end of each month. In these videos I explain why I scored the images as I did and will mention any issues that detracted from the success of the image - this is a double edged sword… while it is true that my own personal tastes will influence my scoring, it is also true that I am not doing this in a black box - I will tell you exactly why your image ended up where it did and you are well within your-rights to submit images that you think I will score highly. To prevent this from becoming a problem, starting in 2023 I am going to be turning the judging over to a volunteer for one month in each quarter. The guest judge’s identity will not be announced until the competition closes, and in months where the judging is done by the volunteer judge, I will have no input whatsoever in the selection process.

I try to be as fair and reasonable as humanly possible when judging your images because I recognize this is a trust issue for many entrants. But my raison d’être is to teach those who visit my channel, everything that I know about macro photography. I would be doing no good whatsoever if I kept my judging secret or if I did not explain why one image faired better than another. If you are sensitive to criticism and would rather not have your work critiqued in a public forum, you may wish to reconsider submitting an entry to the competition. To be clear - I recommend that you do not submit an entry to this competition if you are not willing to have it subjected to public scrutiny, discussion or criticism. If you would like to have your work critiqued, by me, but want to do so privately, sign up for a private lesson and you will have my undivided attention.

I love doing this and I have no interest whatsoever in hurting anyone’s feelings with my comments. I offer my opinion in good faith and out of a sincere desire to see you get the most out of your macro photography experience. But if I am wrong (as I often am), tell me, and if there is something to be fixed, I will fix it.