Preparing Photos for Competition Part One
We all like entering competitions to have fun, learn to improve our photography and to see if we can win. However we don’t always know how to best present our photos. Here are some tips I’ve used for competition entries.
Before we start.
There is something everyone needs to remember about any sort of art competition.
You can’t please every judge all the time.
We all want to know what we need to do to take an award winning shot, however that question doesn’t have a clear answer. In the 2017 Olive Cotton Award for photographic portraiture, which is held in my home town, the winner of the $20,000 first prize was an image named “Maternal Line” by artist Justine Varga. To create the winning image Varga gave her elderly Hungarian grandmother a piece of 5x4 inch photographic negative to scribbled on with various pens and markers. Varga then developed the negative into a 160 x 125 cm print. The image was made without a camera and has no face but won first prize in this portrait competition which for a lot of us sounds absurd. While many people would argue this is not worthy of the grand prize you can read the judges justification for awarding the prize and decide for yourself if it deserves to win.
Maternal Line, 2017.
© Justine Varga. Chromogenic hand printed photograph from 5 x 4 inch negative, 160 x 125cm.
Even though judges sometimes choose unexpected winners you can get consistently better competition results if you work hard at improving your photographic process. However even if you are consistently producing amazing images you will sometimes find a judge that doesn’t like some of your photos.
The best strategy I can suggest is to try and eliminate as many known distractions and signs of poor technique as you can. If you take away the obviously bad elements your image has more opportunities to impress a judge.
Every judge will have their own, individual idea of what makes an award winning image, but what you will find is that a lot of judges will agree on certain key points. Because the areas were judges differ is impossible to predict you best bet for impressing most judges is by focusing on the common areas.
I like to think about the photographic process as being broken down into three areas:
Camera Craft: The skills and techniques around using a camera and setting it up to take an image.
Image Selection: Knowing how to select the right image out of the ones you are captured.
Post Processing: Using processing tools to improve the selected image or achieve a particular result.
Improving your skills in these areas will help you create more award winning images. Let’s start at the beginning.
Camera Craft
In a digital world it is easy to think we can “Fix it in post”, but that is a lie. Doing your best to capture the best image you can in the camera will help you when you are processing the image later. If you don’t already know the basic camera settings, shutter speed, aperture and ISO, then I recommend you watch this video by Tony & Chelsea Northrup called “Camera Settings: Aperture, Shutter Speed & ISO (the Exposure Triangle)”. Also check out my Photo Recipes post on this website which contains popular camera settings for common types of images.
Going beyond the basics, here are some tips I think will help you make award winning photos.
Get it as sharp as possible
If your photo isn’t sharply in focus a competition judge will not be able to see past it. Almost every other photo will be in focus and probably sharpened in post too so your out of focus image will stand out as inferior. To improve the sharpness of your images you can try the following:
Use a tripod or monopod where possible. If your subject is not moving and you have the time to set one up it will reduce camera shake.
Use good camera holding posture. Keep your elbows in, use both hands on the camera and keep your feet in a stable position.
Use a smaller aperture to increase your range of sharp focus.
Use a faster shutter speed. 1/125 usually removes involuntary human movement but you may need a faster shutter when working with fast moving subjects.
Practice and experiment with your camera’s focusing modes. Your camera will have multiple ways of running the auto focus and each will change the way you shoot. Read the manual and discover how they work. Also try your hand at manual focus so you can switch to it when the autofocus fails you.
Crop in camera/zoom with your feet
The more you crop an image the lower the image quality is going to get. While your camera may shoot a 35 megapixel image and the competition may only require a 2 megapixel final image, your image will look sharper and less noisy if you use the entire frame.
Line up your frame as best as you can. Get the horizon straight. Work on the composition. Choose the right focal length and your image quality will be better.
Watch your dynamic range
Your camera can only capture detail in a narrow band of luminosity (brightness) so you will struggle to get details in both the shadows and highlights if they are too different from each other.
“Blown Out” highlights happens when the brightest parts of the image become large sections of pure white pixels. There is no detail in these pixels and you wont be able to recover that detail in post production.
If your shadows end up two dark you might be able to see some details when you brighten them up in post but you will also get a lot of noise too. It is also likely that the colours will be over saturated or flat.
If your camera has highlight warnings, turn it on. Also check your histogram to make sure your luminosity is within your cameras dynamic range.
Shoot in Raw
If you plan on doing any editing then shooting in raw is the most important thing you can do. Photoshop and Lightroom are made to handle RAW files and hard drives are always getting bigger and cheaper so you have no excuse not to. You’ll get better results from your edits than you can ever get from JPG.
Not So Technical Stuff
Quality of light
The characteristics of the lighting in your image are import and and should be a consideration when you are taking a photo. You can chose to have high contrast light with deep shadows for dramatic effect or go for soft even light for a calmer aesthetic. Extremes in either direction are worth avoid unless that is part of the story telling. You should try to get your lighting right in the camera because it’s often difficult to change the quality of light in an image once it has been taken.
Find a story
More and more the ability to tell a story with an image is becoming the most important part of well performing competition entries. Working on this from the very beginning of the photography process can make it a bit easier to achieve in the final image.
Clear point of interest
Your photo story really needs a lead actor so make sure your point of interest is clear. Sometimes you might know what you wanted to show off with your photo but distractions or your subject not being bright/clear/obvious enough makes it hard for your audience to see it. You can look at my post about composition to learn more about arranging the visual elements in your image.
Once you have have filled your memory card with photos it is time to start working with the photos on your computer. We will look at that in part 2.