{"id":35310,"date":"2017-01-12T16:00:13","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T00:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/?p=35310"},"modified":"2016-12-06T22:42:06","modified_gmt":"2016-12-07T06:42:06","slug":"photography-isnt-a-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/12\/photography-isnt-a-contest\/","title":{"rendered":"Photography Isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a Contest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Paris, 2015 #cindyproject<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dear friend,<\/p>\n

I wanted to write to you about photography contests \u00e2\u20ac\u201d why I generally recommend staying away from them.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

First of all, if you enter your photo into a contest, you suddenly become a slave to the opinions of others.<\/p>\n

The most important person to please in your photography is yourself. Not judges. Not random people voting on your photos.<\/p>\n

Do you really care about what others think about your photos? If so, why?<\/p>\n

I personally care what others think about my photos. But the caveat is that I only care about the opinions of my close friends, family, and loved ones. To me, Cindy is my ultimate editor \u00e2\u20ac\u201d what she ultimately thinks about my photos matters more than the opinions of thousands.<\/p>\n

What photo contests are good for<\/h2>\n

Of course, there are always caveats to every opinion I have.<\/p>\n

First of all, I think contests are good in the sense that they force you to edit down your portfolio, and choose your best work. In the past, when I submitted photos for contests, I had to choose only 3-5 of my best photos. This gave me a great opportunity to really sit down, and evaluate my work, and my favorite images.<\/p>\n

However at the same time, entering photo contests added a lot of stress and frustration to my life.<\/p>\n

I thought that I was a great photographer, and I \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deserved\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to win \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or at least place. But the problem was, a lot of winning a photography contest is luck.<\/p>\n

My experiences as a photo judge<\/h2>\n

Being on the other side as a judge in photo contests, whoever wins\/loses\/advances is based on luck.<\/p>\n

For example, the sad reality is that the people who I judged earlier on had more time and attention than people I judged later. If you look at thousands of entries to a photo contest, you eventually hit fatigue. At the end, you are zipping through the photos a lot quicker than photos in the beginning.<\/p>\n

Another problem \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in past street photography contests I judged, I knew a handful of the photos, and the photographers. Of course, this creates a natural bias in myself \u00e2\u20ac\u201d especially if I personally know the photographer, or am familiar with the shots.<\/p>\n

Not only that, but the personal taste of the judges is such a huge determinant whether a participant advances or not. For example, if I love vanilla ice cream over chocolate ice cream \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I will be biased towards vanilla ice cream.<\/p>\n

The same goes with photography. Vanilla ice cream is like black and white photography, whereas chocolate ice cream might be color photography. If I shoot black and white photography, I might generally be biased towards participants who submit black and white photos. The same goes with color photography.<\/p>\n

In life, there are no winners or losers<\/h2>\n

The spartans prevented their youth from participating in contests and games where there were clear \u00e2\u20ac\u0153winners\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153losers\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Why?<\/p>\n

Because they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want their citizens to feel the sting of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153losing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d, or the ego-inflation of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153winning\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Even when the 300 spartans died defending the city, they said that the 300 spartans were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153slaughtered\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (not \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcconquered\u00e2\u20ac\u2122).<\/p>\n

We aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all fighting for the same pie in life<\/h2>\n

As a personal rule, moving forward, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to try my best to avoid games, contests, or activities where there are clear \u00e2\u20ac\u0153winners\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153losers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Why? Because in life, there is no \u00e2\u20ac\u0153winning\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153losing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

Life isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a zero-sum game, with clear winners or losers. Just because I win doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean you lose. Just because you lose, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean I win.<\/p>\n

In life, we can all be winners. We aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all fighting over the same pie. Rather, we can create more<\/em> pies, and create more<\/em> prosperity, happiness, and good-will in the world.<\/p>\n

So don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be a slave to the opinions of others. If you plan on entering photography contests (or any contests), realize the inherent biases of the judges and the system. And if not<\/em> winning photo contests disappoint you, I would just say don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t play the game.<\/p>\n

Always shoot for yourself, and first seek to please yourself.<\/p>\n

Stay true to yourself,
\nEric<\/p>\n

Read more: Personal Photography ><\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear friend, I wanted to write to you about photography contests \u00e2\u20ac\u201d why I generally recommend staying away from them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35206,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_ek_photo_artist_note":"","_ek_photo_thesis":"","_ek_photo_camera":"","_ek_photo_place":"","_ek_photo_human_moment":"","_ek_photo_sequence":"","_ek_photo_question":"","_ek_photo_canonical_claim":"","_ek_photo_ai_summary":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-posts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/eric-kim-photography-Cindy-Project-black-and-white-4-paris-coffee-hand-stress-laptop.jpg?fit=1545%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/erickimphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}