hi guys welcome or welcome back thanks so much for joining me today we are going to talk about how to
do well in print competitions and this is going to be a deep one so buckle up and let's get going
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icon the bell icon will help you cause it'll give you a notification every single time i upload a
video i upload every week and usually now more than that if i feel like it this is an example
of a table talk tuesday and although we're not sat at the table sat next to it so it kind of counts
i wanted to sit and answer a question which has been asked so many times which is basically how
do you start doing print competitions and like how do you do well at them and the age-old golden
question of how do you win a print competition so in today's video we're going to discuss that
i will break this video up into convenient little sections which you can follow along by moving the
little scrubber red line thing down at the bottom and i'm going to intersperse with some assets and
other bits and pieces if you guys don't know uh me or who i am welcome first of all to the channel
join us for crazy photography and portrait related stuff and i am jess mcgovern i got married last
year i was jess wealleans and i am very fortunate to be the uh pet photographer of the year with the
mpa's awards so my little trophy is right here i'm not a print competition veteran actually
last year 2020 was the first time i have ever entered a print competition but i attacked it
with the same level of strategy and planning that i attack most things in life so um you could
say that i did my research and i have been very fortunate to speak to so many multi-award-winning
photographers so if yeah if you don't know i won the pet photographer of the year last year i also
had a ridiculous number of merited images and i also had a lot of finalists i think there was 13
in the end i'm very grateful for receiving that and i learned so much through the process so
i want to discuss with you guys today kind of what print comps are which will be step one section one
and then we will also go ahead and discuss main basic things that need to be kind of like sorted
for every print competition and then we'll go into basically how do you win or do really well in in
the print competition that you're looking at so three very vital things there number one what is
print comp well first we're all about print comp is we don't talk about print comp the main thing
to be aware of in terms of print comp is it's in the name there's usually going to be a printed
section you are likely to have to print your print and send them in you will probably get scored on
your print quality and the choice of papers and things like that so if you're a print virgin
you need to pop that printing cherry and go ahead and start printing your work so you can get a feel
for which papers you like which printers you like all sorts of other stuff you guys know me so well
now that i don't need to repeat that i personally use a digitalab at the moment for any of my
client and award and project images i use the amiga rag fine art paper and that's what i use
so if you were wondering there you go in terms of what happens essentially usually there's like
rounds you submit your images and they get judged by a panel of judges the judging is very very kind
of like structured and there'll be clear criteria kind of like for what gets points and what doesn't
get points and realistically guys main thing to remember is that print comp is a point-based
scoring system your main aim is to not lose points as far as i'm aware nearly every print comp in the
world works on the principle of giving the image as many points as they possibly can usually out of
100 and then they knock points off for things that have gone wrong you will lose points very quickly
for the basics not being correct the basics are things like clipped highlights blocky or lost
shadows things like the focus being in the wrong place lighting being crap composition
being really poor there not being a specific focal point in the image the image being too busy
and a whole host of other stuff if i forget something i'll put it on the screen now
but that is the basics and you will immediately lose points you will go from being in the winner
finalist merit section right down into the rest of them so that is probably the first thing to
remember if your goal is to merit you will need a certain percentage or amount of points to be able
to achieve that merit level if your aim is to be a finalist you need to be further up there and
if your aim is to win basically you need a foot perfect image that has got nothing wrong with
it at all and will appeal to the majority of the judges because the scoring is usually averaged if
four of the judges like what you've done and there's four other judges and they hate it
the hating judges will bring it down so there is an element of subjectivity which we'll come on to
in a second um but yeah so just you kind of want to go for something that is pleasing to a lot of
different photographers and different art people that's kind of the bare minimum there
so you have to have the basics sorted the secondary side of print comp is the editing which
over the last 20 30 years has become quite fine art-esque in its kind of style there will be
different competitions that will suit your style so remember that the vast majority of print comps
will judge your work in a variety of different areas one of those will be those basic sections
but to be honest the most important thing in my opinion for print comp is going to be the impact
initial impact will get the judge's attention and it will score score super super high so if
your image has a lot of impact it will do better than an image that's exactly the same quality
but has a lower level of impact it's kind of like a normal day so you want to try and make
sure that your images are unique and beautiful staggering stunning the next thing that most uh
people don't really understand is that you have to remove the emotional attachment to your work
and that can be really really hard if it's something that you've never had to do before but
you have to be so objective and really kind of scientifically brutal about how you select
your images and how you work through your images for print comp because you are going to get the
points you're not going because oh i love this picture and therefore i'm going to enter it so
i actually asked peter rooney who well i will mention later on as well i asked peter rooney
for what he would say would be the most important thing when you're wanting to win or do well in
print competitions he gave me the perfect answer and i couldn't agree more he answered with and
and i quote three things for me are wow factor storytelling and emotion if i can capture a
narrative that makes the judges stop and think that i'm confident that the image will do well
that's what i aim for let's just look at those again so the wow factor that comes back to impact
right storytelling and emotion again kind of tie into that impact section and you can't discount or
omit the strength that an emotion and passing an emotional feeling and mood in an image can do
which is one of the reasons why i'm really looking forward to the january challenge because that kind
of ties into it if you can portray an emotion in your images your images will probably do well so
let's look now at specific like how are you going to do well in your print comp how are you going to
do well in the print comp that you're wanting to enter well my friend let me tell you okay
so number one go back through the past winners of said print comp i don't want you to copy them but
i want you to look at them from an objective point of view so just get a look get a feel
what kind of vibe is going on so for example well photography organization awards world photography
awards those are very kind of like documentary style um very kind of like real images like gritty
images tend to do well so my images kind of don't fit with them i'm not going to go and enter that
competition because we're not a good match we don't marry up particularly well you could look
at the gilder photographers where to be fair the majority of the high achieving or award-winning
images are quite um fine art-esque they've got a soft painterly effect the the kind of like single
tone pieces of art so yes i have done well with the guild as well but they're very different the
mpa international awards obviously is the ones that i entered last year and did really well in
the mpa awards the previous winners included peter rooney peter has done well in loads of different
awards so it's not specific but i looked at the winning images in multiple different categories
not just my niche remember that so i was wanting to enter canine portraits dog portraits
but i didn't just look at who won the dog category last year because i don't think
i just don't agree with like focusing so much on your niche in situations like this so i looked
at who won the whole thing overall who won each category what was doing well and i didn't just
look at one year i looked at quite a few years and tried to find similarities between the two
between all of them that's kind of straightforward way of looking at it and you'll find similarities
so for me peter has done really well in previous awards and me and peter our work is really quite
different but but there are some similarities and some of the similarities include things
like the fact that peter tends to use kind of like single or deep earthy tones in his work he has a
focal point of interest in the image and it tells a story through other things the composition of
peter's work is usually solid and he doesn't just photograph things in a documentary style it
is quite to be fair it's reasonably heavily edited because peter composites his images
from loads of different shots and then puts them together another interesting thing about peter's
work and why i think personally it does quite well in competitions is that there is more in
the image than you think there is so you look at a picture first of all i'll put one up of
peter's on the screen now that i personally like if you look at it it just looks like a
siren tempting a guy into this lake but if you look closer there's like dead fish lower down in
the image and there's lots of different elements happening so if you look at how the body falls
apart there's a lot more detail in there all these things kind of came together mixed with other
images and other photographers who had done it really well and kind of gave me a list of
stuff that the mpa awards tends to score highly and those things included but were not limited
to a deeper scene singular or very few kind of like colour variations in there a clear emotion
multiple points of interest good composition and of course all of the kind of technical
stuff sorted the main thing is your impact then find a photography organization or photography
award organization that will match your style so you have to make sure that the kind of
two come together there and it's fine that not every organization is going to be your
organization that's absolutely fine so then the next thing to look at is the rules look at the
rules and then look at them again and then look at them again and probably look at them again i would
look at the rules multiple times and i would also look actually at past year's rules to see if there
are any changes and what has changed like i said i do things in a very structured fashion sorry
if this is a bit kind of ott hi i'm jess look at the rules try and find the judging criteria most
organizations will publish the judging criteria if they don't look at people's blog posts on previous
years of their awards look at previous promotions or press releases that have gone
out and look for what they are actually looking for most competitions are judged on 10 points
and one of those is the print quality one of them is usually impact one of them is usually
composition one of them is usually lighting so yeah look at the judging criteria and look
at what people are getting points for and what they're not and you need to really be brutally
scientifically specific about looking at your own images and saying okay this one is really just not
working well for me and if you don't know again go and ask somebody get some advice hire a mentor
do all of these things that will help you improve if you want to do well in print comps
just to reiterate guys do not copy somebody else's work so don't copy who won last year's
and make something similar because the judges aren't going to want to see the same thing done
again they want to see something different they want to see something unique so always produce
unique work and enter your best of your best into awards so how do you win a print competition
you have to produce something that the judges have never seen before that hits the judges in the
feels that has a story there that is technically perfect that has perfect editing so not obvious
editing and you know if it is obvious editing just needs to be done really well so no clone
blobs here or there and no you know dust spots in the image none of that kind of basic stuff that
you need to sort and you just need to really make sure that this piece that you're entering
fits the kind of organization or awards series that you're entering it for because if you have
one of those sections out of place it's not going to go well and chances are it's probably not your
fault it's just just didn't go for the right one so look very carefully and always think what can i
do better next time what can i do to increase this and if like me you have done really well in awards
i do have to ask why are you watching this but then after that i would then suggest
next time don't do something the same go and look at the past winners and just assess do i fit with
this crowd and if you think yeah fit with this crowd enter it you'll never know if you don't if
you have any questions please do let me know down in the comments box and as youtube seems to really
like people giving comments please do comment anyway even if you've got nothing to say please
be nice though because there's no need to not be and i will see you all again really really soon