A Thousand Words: On Photography Contests

At the beginning of the year, I received an email that left me stunned. I was on the road, driving in the rain, tense due to heavy traffic, when I made a stop and saw the message.

“It is my great pleasure to inform you that your work has been awarded a Winning Placement in the 2024 Tokyo International Foto Awards – Congratulations!”

To see the prize, I had to log into the contest platform. With slow internet in the middle of nowhere and the drive still ahead, my curiosity gnawed at me. What intrigued me the most wasn’t the type of prize I’d won—assuming it would be an honorable mention—but rather which photo had been awarded since I didn’t even remember entering that contest.

As the kilometres passed, memories came back. I had thought long and hard before entering because it was an expensive contest—each photo entry cost around $15, if I recall correctly. I carefully evaluated my chances, reviewed past winning photos, and studied some of my own images that had stood out in other competitions. Eventually, I decided to submit just one photo.

Then a flood of possibilities opened up. How to choose a single photo that justified the entry fee? Which photo and category should I choose? A jaguar in the broad wildlife category or a sea turtle in the underwater category? Competing against Tanzania’s lions or Tonga’s humpback whales? Or perhaps submitting the turtle to compete with big cats instead?

There was another option: forget the jaguar and the turtle altogether and enter the photojournalism category. Or maybe an aurora borealis in the night photography or landscape category. But what about the Arctic orca—landscape or black and white? A decision had to be made. The submission deadline was looming, and then came the thought: was it really worth spending that $15?

The sensible answer at that point is “no.” It’s not worth spending $15 for a single photo entry. The math is simple: for every awarded photo, thousands receive an email saying, “Thank you for participating, but this time the jury did not select your photo.” I’ve lost count of how many such emails I’ve received—and the euros, dollars, or reais I’ve spent on them.

Photography contests are highly profitable businesses. Operating globally, it’s relatively easy to set up a contest company in a low-tax, low-cost location while charging participants in dollars or euros via PayPal. Without disclosing participant numbers or successful entries, it’s impossible to know the revenue of these companies specializing in global contests.

In return, contests often provide broad exposure on social media, occasional cash prizes, and group exhibitions featuring awarded photos, which admittedly are not cheap to organize—but still far from offsetting the high entry fees collected.

What’s the downside? Legally and morally, it drains the bank accounts of those dedicated to photography contests. There may also be potential tax evasion by the organizing companies. In some cases, the situation used to be worse and still can be. Many photography (and art) contests are purely speculative work, where artists submit their work in hopes of recognition but end up feeding image banks for organizations or companies that gain irrevocable, infinite, and free use of the submitted work.

It may sound absurd, but it’s common to see terms like this in contest regulations: “If you submit a photograph to the Photo Contest, you grant [the organization] and its related entities, such as parents, affiliates, and subsidiaries, a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive right in perpetuity to use the photograph submitted for any purpose, including but not limited to…” This is often followed by a list of possible uses, including commercial purposes without royalties. It can be so absurd that it includes uses on trinkets like calendars, mugs, caps, stickers, and magnets. This applies to all submitted photographs, not just the winning ones, as participants declare they’ve read and agreed to the terms upon entry.

Recently, CONFOTO (the Brazilian Confederation of Photography) did excellent work with a major contest in Brazil, the Brasília Photo Show. Until CONFOTO became a partner, all submitted photos were added to a typical spec work image bank. Starting in 2023, as a condition for the partnership, the contest included the following regulation: “Photos submitted to the Brasília Photo Show Festival, whether winners or not, will not be used by the organization to feed an image bank without the participant’s approval, nor will they be shared with commercial partners. Participants retain responsibility for commercializing their photos.”

I don’t think this approach suits every contest since some exist solely to build image banks. Regardless of whether they’re free or paid, national or global, or promise great exposure, I never participate in speculative contests.

So, how do I identify contests worth entering? When I come across one that matches my photographic themes, I follow these criteria regardless of the price:

1. Read the rules. If the contest aims to build an image bank (spec work), it’s off the list no matter what it offers. Reading the rules also avoids headaches about image size, resolution, and other requirements that could lead to disqualification.
2. Generative models (commonly known as AI). If contests don’t clearly distinguish between photos and AI-generated images, I tend to avoid them. Some contests now have dedicated categories for these images, which helps keep traditional photography separate.
3. The jury. After agreeing to the rules, I check who will judge the photos. If the contest is free, this becomes less critical, but I still want to know if respected photographers will see my work.
4. The price. If entry is free, it’s an easy decision. If paid, the jury’s quality carries the most weight.

In short, as long as the contest isn’t speculative, the jury matters more to me than the price. The reason is simple: I want my work seen by experts, especially those I admire—like in the 2022 Ocean Photographer of the Year contest, where I was a finalist.