Studio #4- Competitions

Wednesday 4th November- Andy Farrington


Today we had a break from the usual Studio session and instead Andy talked us through some useful things such as competitions, and useful websites.


Competitions


This is something i need to think about, entering competitions is a good way of getting your name and your work out there and if you win not only could you win money, a camera or something useful but in a way it is like free advertising.
Getting your work known and recognised is a good way of guarunteeing work after finishing the course.


The most important of the competitions is possibly the AOP awards:


http://hub.the-aop.org/


I have signed up for a student membership as i think this would be useful and means it is cheaper to enter the competitions, the below one is just £2.50 per single entry and you can enter something that fits into the following categories:


• Lifestyle & Portraiture (Single & Series)
Includes portraits and lifestyle images featuring people and/or animals as the primary element.


• Fashion & Beauty (Single & Series)
Includes fashion and beauty-style images.


• Landscape, Interiors & Exteriors (Single & Series)
Includes landscapes, cityscapes, seascapes, interiors, exteriors and architecture which may or may not include people, animals or objects as a secondary element.


• Still Life (Single & Series)
Includes still life and food shots where inanimate objects feature as the primary element.


I plan to enter this competition as i think the publicity that the winner gets would be invaluable to my photography career.


The AOP website is also useful for dowloading things like terms and model release forms.


Other competition websites Andy showed us were:


http://www.photoawards.com/


http://www.prixpictet.com/


http://www.photocompetitions.com/


I also setup an account with delicious- a website where you can save your bookmarks, the benefit of this is that you can log in to this from any computer so you can access your list of favourite websites from anywhere. It is also easier to organise them in Delicious than in the standard bookmarks you get with a web browser. Below are some of the websites i found and put onto my Delicious:


http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/


Useful for camera reviews, equipment and also photography competitions.


http://www.ephotozine.com/competitions


Competitions, information and directories of contacts for anything Photographic.


A useful site is http://www.photocritic.org/ there is an article advising how to win Photography Competitions.


The Taylor Wessing prize is a competition for which the prize is £12000!


http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/photoprize/site09/index2.php

Here is the winning Photo for 2009:

Photograph by Paul Floyd Blake- Rosie Bancroft
http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/news/Film_photographer_wins_12k_Taylor_Wessing_prize__who_needs_digital_news_291367.html
The above link is for an article on the winning photograph.
I saw the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of last years photos and as i am going to London again later this year, i plan to see this years exhibition so will put a post on my blog about this.