If you’ve ever stared at a “competition worthy” image and thought, “Is this actually any good, or am I just emotionally attached and mildly delusional?” then this episode is for you.

In this one, I’m lifting the lid on what really happens inside a judge’s head when your prints hit the panel: the mindset you need, the mistakes we see over and over again, and the tiny details that can quietly kill an otherwise beautiful image.

We’ll talk blown highlights, grubby greys, over sharpening, dodgy mounts, vignettes turned up to eleven, and why blindly following the latest photo trend might actually sink your chances. We’ll also get into mentors, titles, paper choice, time pressure (my personal kryptonite), and why the only real failure in competitions is not to enter at all.

If you’re thinking about qualifications, print comps or you just want to finish your images to a higher standard, grab a drink, have a listen, and then go and do something brave with your work.

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Transcript

[00:00:00 ] it's Thursday, late afternoon, early evening. It's gone dark. It's November. I've got what's left of a mug of coffee next to me. And I just thought I'd sit and record this podcast. It's been, it has to be said a really good day. We've had a lovely client in seeing their wedding pictures, which is always lovely when it goes the way it did.

Lots of tears. Their's, not mine. Um, they love them. They've picked well for their album, cannot wait to produce that for them. It's been a really good week. Lots of nice clients, but over the next few days, Sarah and I are really hoping we get to step away from it just for a bit. We were hoping to get abroad, but it looks like with scheduling issues, that isn't gonna quite happen.

But we live in an area stuck between London and Oxford, so at the very least we have a huge proportion of interesting things to go and have a look at. And that's my hope is we get away from this beautiful business that I love, but it really is all encompassing. So just for a day or [00:01:00 ] two time to take a bit of a break, I'm Paul and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.

So, hello one and all. I hope you're all well in this particular podcast, um, because I'm hoping to get out the door and go for a drink tonight with some friends. Um, a little less waffle and a , slightly more to the point podcast. Probably some of you will prefer that some of you might miss the randomness.

Um, however, if you listen to the last podcast, it was a little bit about what it's like to be a judge when you are assessing qualifications, panels, and print judging in general. Today what I wanted to do was go through some of the things that [00:02:00 ] occur to me that may be applicants either don't know or quietly ignore, which might be the truth.

But basically the things that as judges we see, and I thought I just stepped through it from that point of view. Slightly less about the judges, slightly more about what to look for if you are entering a competition. Now, I've done this style of podcast. I think this might be my fourth, fifth, maybe sixth version of it over the years, can you believe it's been nearly 10 years I've been recording this. Um, either way, what I wanted to do was just update it, go through some of the things that are fresh in my mind from judging qualifications a few weeks ago, and then judging the Print Master's competition, um, just, uh, a couple of weeks ago.

Both of those, you learn different things. You see different things, but I thought I'd just relay, if I can, the stuff that maybe you should consider if you are thinking about entering, in particular, print competitions, [00:03:00 ] but this extends out to really any image competition you can, you can think of. So with that, if that's not your shtick, then this isn't the episode for you.

But if you fancy just having a listen and seeing if this echoes with you, that would be great.

So.

Listen up. Now. Firstly, I have to admit that from my point of view, entering competitions, I recognize as being both terrifying and slightly addictive. There really is something wonderful about finishing your images to a level that maybe you don't normally do.

Maybe that, that tiny amount of perfection, those stray hairs, those eyebrows, lips, I mean, of course my portrait photographer, so I'm talking primarily people here, but that level of detail that maybe your regular, everyday Good Professional Practice, we call it, maybe your everyday work doesn't warrant because, in the end, every hour you spend on an image is cost. We [00:04:00 ] don't normally regard it as cost, 'cause we enjoy our job and it's time. You know what? It's like time. Who cares about time? Well, you should because it's your business. And so there's something really addictive about spending that time with a purpose on an image that you think you believe maybe, maybe just maybe will do well in a competition.

Now that said, of course, every time you enter to, you don't know what the judges are gonna say. And let's get that right out in the open at the beginning, at the top of this podcast, a different day, a different judge, a different result. And that is just the way of it. So you cannot ever really totally predict what you're gonna do, how your images are gonna perform. You can't. You can have a guess, and you can predict within a boundary or two. But in the end, it is totally down to what the judges see on the day and you have to get used to that no matter how much effort you've [00:05:00 ] poured into an image. And I've had images where I was certain, certain it was going to do well and did nothing.

And I've had other images where I was like, well, it's all right, but if I'm lucky in the right judges are on the panel, it might do okay and they've gone on to win. You really dunno. So just be aware of that because those disappointments shouldn't deter you. Yeah, they should just really drive you to do more of it.

But that's very hard and I will admit that I too suffer from that sense of disappointment. The inferiority complex that comes with it. A degree of resentment, I suppose. What do the judges know when, when you win something? The judges amazing. I love them. They were brilliant. You could see how sharp their eyes were when the judges don't award you something or your images don't do well, of course, the judges were idiots. They didn't know what they were talking about. And as a judge, I'm completely aware of it.

So in this podcast, we're gonna go through what you should look out for, the mindset, the, uh, technical side of it, [00:06:00 ] some of the presentation stuff, and some of the silly things really, that as a judge, we sit collectively and just groan.

Um, there's sometimes you hear in the room that if only, if only. The, uh, image had this, if only the author had done that, those kinds of conversations. So let's work my way through the list. I put together a little bit of a list of things, um, and let's hope that some of this chimes with you. So first section is all about, uh, mindset.

And at the end of the day, nearly everything about photography is what goes on in your head. So let's talk a little bit about your preparation and your mindset. First things first, you cannot, you cannot. Be objective about your own work. Alright? It's just not possible. And to be fair, no one can be truly objective about something that's creative.

You can be subjective and you can be experienced, but you cannot ever be objective when it's your own work. The memory of the shoot, the memory of the [00:07:00 ] client, the memory of the moment will totally cloud your judgment. You cannot do it. You are, you are emotionally invested in your work. So be aware of that because you need to get a mentor now by a mentor.

Ideally, it's someone who's been around a little bit, who's done a few things, knows their way around, competitions, the structures, the rules at the very least, um, hopefully, um, produces images that are of the standard you are hoping to produce, and preferably in a style that you wish to attain in a style t