So after three years of being told almost daily that the only way to prove your worth and measure your ability against the world as a photographer was to enter competitions. I did. I get it, I understand why they exist but it just goes against every reason why I picked up a camera. If I wanted to live in London and have people tell me how great I am at something I would have moved there along time ago. Every time I leave Cornwall for more than a day or two I desperately want to come home especially if I can’t see the coast. Maybe it’s an age thing. I have travelled the world in my younger years and been fascinated by different cultures and incredible sights but all it really made me realise is that I don’t need to travel to be fulfilled and to be happy. I could spend several lifetimes here in Kernow without getting bored or feel the need to leave the county. I find the most interesting, creative and kind people live at the end of an island next to the ocean.
So I entered three competitions, not quite the holy trinity but some of the ones I remembered from my lectures the last few years and then proceeded to forget about them until one by one I received an email from each telling me my images had been shortlisted and asking for the chosen pictures in higher resolution. I was kind of winging it I guess, having not taken any pictures with the competitions in mind but it was a good feeling knowing that some people who are important in the photography industry enjoyed my work and wanted to see more of it.
The image that was shortlisted for Wildlife photographer of the year 2026 was my least favourite of those I submitted. I had just added it to make up the numbers and justify the entry fee. It was of starlings of course and I remember the shoot with low light and mizzle not being my finest moment with a camera, still they wanted it. Now here came the problem. There are some very strict rules with WPOTY and some crazy stories about how winning entries were found not to be natural animal behaviour. One dude got an amazing shot of an ant eater only to be exposed for using a dead stuffed animal to get his winning picture. So any kind of staging or image manipulation is a big no no and I absolutely agree with that. Now I very rarely remove anything from an image in post apart from maybe the occasional dust spot from my sensor. (Im not lazy you get a lot more dust spots if you take pictures of storms). While I do look at levels and of course occasionally crop its highly unusual I would want to take anything from a scene away but on this occasion and well after I had handed it in I remembered that I had actually removed a tiny tree from the skyline that would have looked ok if it was still there so when they asked for larger files, that was that, no further advance on Wildlife photographer of the year, as it would clearly say on the pictures meta data that I had taken it away.
The second comp I entered was Landscape photographer of the year and my crazy seascape just didn’t quite cut the mustard for them. They sent me a graph showing me just how many thousand pictures I had beaten to get to where I was placed, but still no cigar.
The final competition was the London camera exchange Photographer of the year 2026. I was highly commended for this one and made it into their winners book.
Im pleased I had a little bash but I do not feel the need to enter any more competitions.
