What a great way to start the week!!
I spent the day yesterday combing through all the photo contest entries we got last month for our $1,000 Photo Challenge. What amazing talent we have in this community.
If you entered the contest last month – congratulations! Taking action is the first step. Hopefully you built a habit of taking photos every day, and you’re still at it.
If you didn’t get in this time, perhaps we’ll run another challenge later in the year. For now, get your camera out and start practicing.
Here are a few of my favorite contest entries (in no particular order — and this certainly isn’t all of them) …
Remember, participants were asked to send in 3 photos in a series. Not just a single image.
I liked how the photographers experimented with angles and viewpoints in these…
And I love how these images include everyday items. When I first designed this contest, this is what I hoped most people would experiment with…
We even got a few travel entries from people living abroad…
Photo contests are a great way to earn money from your photos and/or win cool prizes. You can make a couple thousand dollars a year just looking for the best fits for your photographs.
Just keep these things in mind…
• DON’T sign away too many rights. If the company hosting the contest asks for “All Rights,” this means you will no longer own the photograph once you upload it. They can sell it as they see fit and you don’t want that.
• DON’T pay to enter. They should be paying you with the chance to win money or prizes, not the other way around.
• BEWARE of the “Everyone Wins” Scam where you’re asked to buy a book in which all the submissions are included.
• ALWAYS follow submission guidelines closely.
• ALWAYS look for ways to make your photo stand out.
• And ALWAYS check their website for past winners – you might find some clues as to why they pick certain images over others.
In the case of this contest, we got more than 500 entries and I’ve narrowed the finals down to my top 10. I’m hoping to announce a winner next week.
[Editor’s Note: Learn more about how you can fund your travels and make an extra income with photography, travel writing, blogging, and more in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel. Sign up here today and we’ll send you a new report, Profit From Your Photos: A Quick-Start Guide, completely FREE.]