The Only Real Failure Is Not Entering: A Candid Guide to Competition Prep
If you’ve ever stared at what you *think* is a competition-worthy image and wondered, “Is this actually any good, or am I just emotionally attached and slightly delusional?”, then this blog is for you.
In this post, I’m lifting the lid on what really goes on in a judge’s head when your prints hit the panel: the mindset you need, the mistakes we see over and over again, and the tiny details that can quietly kill an otherwise beautiful image.
We’ll talk blown highlights, grubby greys, over-sharpening, dodgy mounts, vignettes turned up to eleven, and why blindly following the latest photo trend might actually sink your chances. We’ll also get into mentors, titles, paper choice, time pressure (my personal kryptonite), and why the only real failure in competitions is simply not entering at all.
If you’re thinking about qualifications, print competitions, or you just want to finish your images to a higher standard, grab a drink, have a read, and then go and do something brave with your work.
It’s Thursday, late afternoon drifting into early evening. It’s dark already, it’s November, and I’ve got what’s left of a mug of coffee beside me. I thought I’d sit down and write this blog.
It has to be said, it’s been a really good day. We’ve had a lovely client in to view their portraits – and it’s always wonderful when a viewing goes the way this one did. Lots of tears. Theirs, not mine. They loved the images; they’ve chosen really well for their album, and I can’t wait to produce it for them.
It’s been a really good week too – lots of lovely clients – but over the next few days, Julia and I are hoping we can step away from it all for a bit.
We live in that belt of countryside between Nottingham and Leeds, so at the very least, we have a huge number of interesting places to go and explore. My hope is that we can escape, just briefly, from this beautiful business that I love, but which is utterly all-consuming. Just a day or two to take a breath.
So, hello one and all. I hope you’re well. In this particular blog post – because I’m keen to get out of the door to meet some friends for a drink later – I’m going to try for a little less waffle and a slightly more to-the-point approach. Some of you will prefer that; some of you may miss the random tangents.
If you read the last blog post, it was about what it’s like to be a judge when you’re assessing qualifications panels and print judging in general. Today, I want to go through some of the things that occur to me that applicants either don’t know or quietly ignore – which may, if we’re honest, be closer to the truth.
Basically, these are the things that we, as judges, see again and again. I thought I’d step through them from that point of view: a little less about the judges and a little more about what *you* should be looking for if you’re entering a competition.
I’ve written this kind of post before – this might be the fourth, fifth, maybe even sixth version over the years. Hard to believe I’ve been doing this for nearly ten years. Either way, I wanted to update it and go through some of the things that are fresh in my mind from judging qualifications a few weeks ago, and then the Print Masters competition a couple of weeks after that.
Those two contexts teach you different things and reveal different issues, but I thought I’d relay some of what you might want to consider if you’re thinking of entering, particularly print competitions, though most of this extends to any image competition you can think of.
1. Mindset
Listen up.
First, I have to admit that entering competitions is both terrifying and slightly addictive. There is something wonderful about finishing your images to a standard you don’t normally reach in day-to-day work.
Competitions give you permission to spend that time with a very specific purpose: polishing an image that you think – you hope – maybe, just maybe, will do well.
Of course, every time you enter, you have no idea what the judges are going to say. Let’s get that out in the open at the very start: different day, different judges, different result. That’s just how it is.
You can never fully predict how your images will perform. You can have a sense of it; you can estimate within a boundary or two. But ultimately it comes down to what the judges see on the day, and you have to get used to that, no matter how much effort you’ve poured into an image.
I’ve had images where I was absolutely certain they would do well, and they achieved nothing. I’ve also had images where I thought, “It’s okay – if I’m lucky and the right judges are on the panel, it might do all right,” and they’ve gone on to win. You truly don’t know.
Those disappointments shouldn’t deter you. Ideally, they should drive you to do more. That’s easier said than done – I’m as susceptible as anyone to disappointment, inferiority complexes and a bit of resentment. When you win something, the judges are geniuses with razor-sharp eyes. When you don’t, clearly they’re idiots who don’t know what they’re talking about. As a judge, I’m fully aware of this dynamic.
In this blog post, we’re going to walk through what you should look out for: mindset, technical issues, presentation, and the silly things that make judges collectively groan. You can almost hear it in the room sometimes: “If only… If only the author had done this… If only they’d fixed that…”
So, first up: mindset and preparation.
You cannot be objective about your own work. It’s just not possible. To be fair, no one can be truly objective about anything creative, but you are *especially* compromised with your own images. The memory of the shoot, the client, the moment – all of that colours your judgement. You are emotionally invested.
So you need a mentor.
By mentor, I mean someone who has been around a bit, has done things, understands competitions, the structures, the rules, and ideally produces images at the standard you aspire to – preferably in a style you love and want to deliver yourself.
If you’re in tune with their work, you’re more likely to listen to them. It doesn’t necessarily mean they’re more skilled than another mentor, but if you respect and enjoy their images, you’ll pay more attention to what they see and say.
If you really can’t get a mentor, at least pass your images around among trusted friends and see what they spot. Just be aware that your mum (certainly my mum) will always tell you your work is beautiful. My mates are rather more brutal. If you can find another photographer willing to help, it’s the best thing you can do.
Next mindset point: the only *true* failure in competitions is not entering.
Entering isn’t failure. Entering and winning is the success we’d all love. Entering and not winning is simply a different level of success. It’s not the one you wanted, and it may not recognise your work in the way you’d hoped, but it’s still progress.
Most competitions are anonymous, so who cares if your images don’t do well? Who cares if your qualifications panel doesn’t quite make it? The only person who will tell the world is you. So if you’re nervous or insecure, just keep it under your hat until you’re ready to share.
**Enter.**
Go and watch the judging sessions. Not all are public, but The Societies’ judging is, and that’s coming up in January as I record this. Go and watch. Listen to the judges, especially in categories where every image is critiqued.
Events like Click Conference have been fantastic in recent years: every image gets a short critique from at least one judge. You learn so much. A lot of judging in our industry is quiet and anonymous: just score panels, no commentary. That’s nowhere near as useful as hearing the reasoning.
Do treat these sessions as a free masterclass in critique and standards.
Now, you *must* read the rules.
So many images end up disqualified or heavily penalised simply because the entrant didn’t pay attention to them: AI usage, composites, wrong print or mount sizes, wrong category, and category definitions are sacred.
As judges, we cannot move images between categories, even if we can see where they belong. It is up to the entrant to submit the image in the correct category. If we start moving prints, we risk helping one person win and another person lose unfairly – and we might still be wrong.
So, we do not move images between categories. Category definitions are sacred. Read them. Pay attention to them. If it says “domesticated animals”, understand what that means. If it says “studio portrait”, understand what qualifies. Don’t assume. Every association has slightly different rules and interpretations.
Read them. Make notes. If anything is unclear, ask. Email the competition organisers – they almost always reply.
Give yourself time. Please.
There will be shipping delays, print issues, and customs nightmares. Recently, we had goods from a supplier in Italy get stuck in customs *leaving* Italy, never mind arriving here. Not a competition entry, but a reminder of how easy it is to miss a deadline.
I’m very much a last-minute person and forever up against a deadline. I’m acutely aware of the risk that it carries. So when I say “give yourself plenty of time”, I speak from painful experience.
One more mindset point while I’m here: be wary of blindly following trends.
Creating fashionable, on-trend images is fine, but if you’re going to win with them, you need to be exceptional, because everyone else will likely be entering similar work. Impact is diminished when judges see multiple versions of essentially the same image. The winner will be the one who delivers the greatest impact, usually one of the first couple of similar images and almost certainly the highest standard.
You don’t have to be “different” to be good. Being good is different enough. But in competitions, the impact of seeing something you’ve never seen before really does count.
2. Technical Execution
In the end, execution is everything.
I’m talking primarily about print competitions here, because in print absolutely everything shows – and that’s the point. Print exposes things that screens don’t, unless you’ve got a very high-end, perfectly calibrated monitor, in ideal light, viewed with fresh eyes.
Print has a way of surfacing both the strengths and weaknesses in a photographer’s process. That’s why it’s still such a powerful medium for judging.
A few recurring technical issues:
**Over-sharpening**
Over-sharpening is a killer. Judges hate it, and we see it all the time.
In all the years I’ve been judging, I’ve *never* heard anyone say, “This image is under-sharpened.” I’ve heard:
* “This image is blurred.”
* “This has been blown up from a file that’s too small.”
But never: “This is under-sharpened.”
On the other hand, I would confidently say that in every session I’ve ever judged, someone has said, “This image is over-sharpened.” You see it in halos: little light lines around edges. They’re very easy to spot.
If you’re worried, you’re on the edge – turn the sharpening down. With modern sensors, you often don’t need it at all. If you print well, control your exposure, colours and tones, and your printing is good, you rarely need heavy sharpening, if any.
Always sharpen last in your workflow, once the file is at the final print size. If you sharpen at the beginning, every subsequent edit risks exaggerating those sharpening artefacts.
**Exposure**
Get your exposure right. Don’t blow your highlights; don’t block your blacks.
Blown highlights are almost always a nightmare. If there are blown highlights in a print (other than tiny specular points on shiny surfaces), judges will spot them and they will penalise.
We had an image recently where, to me, everything about it was essentially everything I’d love to have created: shape, form, moment, emotion, printing, mounting – all of it. But sunlight through a skylight had caught the edges of some shiny stonework and blown the highlights. That became the sticking point for most of the judges.
I was initially inclined to give it some leeway because the emotion was so strong, but the other judges were right to challenge that. Blown highlights are blown highlights.
Blocked shadows are a bit more nuanced. You need to ask: *Would* we expect to see detail there? If the answer is yes, blocked shadows are a problem. If, however, you’re placing your subject on a deliberately black background, that’s a different conversation – solid blacks can be stylistic.
Just don’t aim for pure paper white or ink-less paper black where you want tone – test your papers. Print a series of blacks from 0% to 10% and see where you can clearly distinguish the steps. Wherever that is – 5%, 6%, 7% – that’s your minimum black.
**Eyes and detail**
For portraits, eyes must be sharp unless it is absolutely obvious that the softness is a deliberate artistic choice. Blurred eyes rarely score well.
You need catchlights too – a bit of sparkle – but make sure they’re in the right place. It’s easy to Photoshop catchlights in these days; harder to make them look believable.
Watch for dust spots, stray hairs, and cloning marks. We had images recently where there were visible dust spots in the sky. That limits how well the image can score – cleaning your sensor and your file is digital photography 101.
Some judges have an uncanny ability to spot cloning or banding from across the room. I’m particularly good at spotting dust and banding in the skies. Assume someone on the panel will see it.
**Colour management**
Use a fully colour-calibrated workflow. Calibrate your monitor, use the right profiles for your printer and paper, and make sure your viewing conditions for prints are consistent and neutral.
Not many of us can afford a D50 light box, but you can get close with high-quality, high-CRI LED viewing lights from companies like Datacolor or Ilford. Put your print under a proper light and you’ll be amazed at how much detail and tonal nuance pop out. That’s how judges will be viewing your work.
**Paper choice**
Match the paper to the image. There are some safe choices – semi-mattes with good colour, dynamic range and D-max, for example.
Barita-type papers are beautiful but can be very contrasty and prone to blocking shadows, so test them carefully. Some papers also show “bronzing” or “chroming” when viewed at an angle, revealing where there isn’t much ink on the surface. That’s particularly relevant because the outer judges on a panel often see a print first from an angle as it’s brought in. Print test strips, move them under the light, and understand how your paper behaves.
3. Print Quality and Presentation
I’ve called this “the final polish” – your print is your shop window. It’s how you present your image to the judges, and it must look as close to perfect as you can make it.
More and more people use labs and have prints shipped directly to competitions. I understand why – it saves on postage and time – but always, ** see your print yourself before submission.
Judges assume you have seen the print and that what we’re looking at is what you *wanted* us to see. Any defects are, therefore, on you. There’s no excuse.
**Mounting and sizing**
Your mount is important. If it’s the wrong size, that’s basic “reading the rules 101”, and it should be disqualified.
We’ve debated how harsh that feels. As judges, we want people to do well, not to crush their enthusiasm. But everyone else in that competition has gone to the effort of getting it right. We had entries recently where presentation was absolutely exquisite – perfect 20x16 mounts, beautifully cut windows, immaculate paper choice and colour.
If we allow a wrongly sized mount to remain and it does well at the expense of a correctly mounted image, that’s simply unfair.
So we try to look at it not as “penalising” those who didn’t comply, but “rewarding” those who did. If you haven’t complied with the rules, that’s not the judges’ fault.
Read the rules. Make sure you understand the exact mount and print dimensions – inches if they’re given in inches, millimetres if they’re given in millimetres.
**Flush prints and handling**
Flush-mounted prints – where the image covers the entire board – can be very effective but carry risks.
If the printed surface is completely exposed, stacking prints increases the chance of scratching. Even with sealants or lacquers, it’s a risk.
If you print edge-to-edge on a full 20x16 sheet, print handlers have no safe border to hold. Even with gloves, there’s a real chance of touching the inked area at the edges. My recommendation: if you’re going to do this, leave a narrow unprinted border so the handlers can hold the print safely.
**Rippling and bowing**
We saw a lot of rippled prints this year: images taped to the back of a mount without a proper backboard. The tape, mount board and print all expand and contract at different rates in changing temperature and humidity. The result is rippling.
The best solution is to mount your print to an adhesive backboard so it is completely flat, then hinge your window mount on top. Alternatively, use spray mount or photo mount adhesive to fix the print to a backboard.
What you should *not* do is tape all the way around the edges of a print and stick it loosely into a mount with no backboard. That’s almost guaranteed to ripple. Curled edges and ripples are distracting and will lose you points.
**Subtle edits win**
While I’ve put this under “presentation”, it straddles both technical execution and finishing. Heavy retouching and strong vignettes are things we see over and over.
Vignettes are powerful tools to guide the eye, but they should be almost invisible. The viewer shouldn’t *see* the vignette; they should simply feel their attention drawn where you intended.
To check your vignettes, look at your images small – in a small grid or thumbnail view in Lightroom. Heavy vignettes tend to leap out at that scale.
Also, remember that even in shadow areas, you would still expect to see tiny specular highlights. If your vignette turns everything to uniform muddy darkness, it will look artificial. Allow little pockets of light to survive – that’s what a natural vignette looks like.
4. Composition and Storytelling
I often prefer the word “layout” to “composition” – you’re laying out the parts of your picture where you want them – but either way, the principle is the same: composition should guide, not confuse.
Place things carefully. Give your subject room. Don’t push key elements up tight to the edges of the frame. Avoid cropping through joints – if you must crop a limb, crop mid-limb, not at the elbow or knee.
Be wary of skimming edges – where something important just touches or nearly touches the frame line. It feels cramped and uncomfortable.
Remember that when you mount a print, you’ll lose a few millimetres all the way round. I saw a lot of images this year that looked as if they had enough breathing space in the original file, but ended up cramped once mounted. Allow for that in your crop.
Avoid distractions behind the subject and at the edges of the frame – anything that pulls the eye away from where you want it to be.
As judges, we are not allowed to turn your image upside down or view it in any way other than how you intended. You, however, *can* flip or rotate your image while editing.
There are many tricks:
* Turn the image upside down.
* View saturation maps.
* View luminosity maps.
All of these help reveal where the brightest, most saturated, or most visually “heavy” areas are, and whether they’re pulling attention away from your subject.
You want judges to have an immediate impact – “Wow!” – followed by a reward as they explore the detail and find that the image gets better and better the longer they look.
Horizontals and verticals: get them right.
If there’s a horizon, it should be horizontal unless there is a very clear, deliberate reason for it not to be. The clue is in the name: horizon – horizontal.
For architecture, verticals should be vertical unless there’s a deliberate, obvious creative choice to bend them. Converging verticals are fine when used intentionally, but not as a result of inattention.
**Storytelling**
It is *not* the judge’s job to decode your story. It is your job to tell it clearly.
If we don’t “get it”, that’s not our problem; it’s yours. That may sound blunt, but it’s true.
Every so often, we see an image where, later, the photographer explains the story and the context, and it’s wonderful – but we couldn’t see that in the image alone. That’s frustrating, but we can’t judge on what we weren’t told or shown.
Use everything at your disposal: title, composition, colour, subject choice, expression, light.
Whatever else, emotion will *always* beat cleverness. It doesn’t matter how clever you think your concept is – if it leaves people cold, it won’t score as well as something simpler but emotionally powerful.
Picture a face with a single tear rolling down – the emotion is immediate.
Test your storytelling with mentors and friends. Ask them what they see and feel *before* you explain your intention. If their answer bears no resemblance to what you hoped to communicate, you may need to rethink.
5. Strategy: Playing the Long Game
Do not cannibalise your own set of images.
If you’ve shot seven or eight great images from one session, resist the urge to enter all of them. Choose one – maybe two – ideally in different categories.
If you submit multiple similar images, you’re essentially sending us the same thing over and over. By the time we get to the last one, the impact is diminished, regardless of order. Impact is the first and last of the criteria we look at.
You can always use the others in different competitions, but be aware that many judges work across multiple organisations. Variety across your overall set generally shows more depth and control than repetition from one shoot.
**Titles**
Titles are a curious thing. Personally, I’ve often argued against them because we’re judging images, not poetry. However, I also know that a good title can help a panel connect with a photograph and heighten the emotional response – a bit like varnish tying together an oil painting.
So if a competition allows titles, use that opportunity. A good title is unlikely to *harm* your score and quite likely to enhance the enjoyment and impact.
**Time**
Don’t rush. I know I’ve said this already, but it’s worth repeating.
Ideally, print on one day and review the next. Let the ink settle and your emotions settle. Look at the prints with fresh eyes.
Use feedback – mentors, peers, trusted friends. Even when you don’t like what you’re hearing, listen. That’s where growth happens.
6. Common Pitfalls
A quick recap of some of the most common own-goals we see:
**Wrong category**
Don’t enter a family group in the “newborn” category just because there’s a baby in it. Read and respect the definitions.
**Wrong print/mount size**
If your print or mount size doesn’t comply, it’s at risk of disqualification. By the time you find out, you’ve already paid entry fees and print costs.
**Ripples and curled prints**
Caused by poor mounting. Use backboards and proper mounting techniques.
**Poor colour management**
Prints that bear little resemblance to the intended look because of uncalibrated screens or wrong profiles.
**Over-sharpening, blocked blacks, grubby greys**
Grubby greys are particularly common in monochrome work: muddy midtones, no clean blacks or crisp whites, and generally lifeless tonality. In monochrome (whether true black-and-white or a toned palette), you need detail, contrast and a full range of tones where appropriate.
**Plastic skin**
Overcooked AI retouching or heavy skin-smoothing sliders. Your clients might love it, but competition judges usually won’t. We want things to look polished and flattering, but still human.
7. Why Bother Entering?
From a professional photographer’s point of view, there are two big reasons to enter competitions (and, by extension, pursue qualifications).
**1. It’s good business.**
Any *genuine* award is excellent publicity. And when I say “award-winning”, I mean you’ve actually won a recognised award – a bronze, silver, gold, or an overall placing in a respected competition – not simply “commended” in a tiny, obscure contest. Commendations are still valuable, but they’re not the same as a major award.
Use your achievements honestly in your marketing. “Runner-up in a national competition” is still a great line, as long as it’s true. Talk about how your clients and subjects helped you get there – it makes for powerful, authentic stories.
**2. It develops your skills.**
The process of preparing work for competition changes you. You learn:
* Colour work at a deeper level
* Subtle retouching
* The finer points of composition and storytelling
* How to use vignettes and local adjustments elegantly
* How to print properly and see what a print reveals that a screen can hide
Those skills creep back into your everyday work, even if you’re not printing for most clients.
Watching judging – especially when your own images are on the panel – is hugely educational. One of the reasons I judge is that I learn so much from the discussions and challenges.
Raising a challenge as a judge is one of the scariest things you can do: you’re effectively saying to colleagues you respect, “I think there’s something here you may have missed.” Sometimes they agree and move; sometimes they very politely explain why they don’t. Either way, the debate is incredibly instructive.
8. Final Thoughts
Entering a competition is a brave thing to do.
Remember: you can keep it entirely anonymous if you wish. You don’t have to tell anyone you entered – you only have to tell people when you win.
The only *real* failure in image competitions is not to enter at all.
I’m far from perfect at following my own advice. My biggest weakness is time: I leave things too late, which means I’m editing at midnight, rushing prints, missing images I’d meant to include, or not entering at all because the deadline has come and gone. From that one poor habit, everything else can unravel.
Whatever *your* weakness is, acknowledge it and plan around it as best you can. Get your images organised. Get another pair of eyes on them – mentor, workshop, friend – and then take the leap.
Right. On that note, I’m going to finish this (now cold) mug of coffee, head out to the pub to meet some friends, and then take a few days away doing something interesting.
Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are, and however you choose to enter – or not – be kind to yourself. Take care, and be brave with your work.
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