What makes a competition-winning photograph?
There are no hard and fast rules that mean one photograph wins a competition and another doesn’t, but there is one key ingredient – originality. The judges are looking for something that stops them in their tracks, something really creative, fresh and surprising. One mistake many people make is attempting to copy previous winners.That’s a bad idea, and simply increases the chances of your hard work being put straight into the ‘seen it all before’ file. By all means, look at past winners for inspiration. Every professional wildlife photographer I know delights in analysing other people’s pictures in competitions, newspapers, magazines and books. Flick through fairly quickly to see which pictures stand out – and then analyse why. Seek out pictures by the big names in wildlife photography and ask yourself what makes their work special. Incidentally, there are no special tricks to get your pictures noticed. Some photographers try mounting their 35mm transparencies in extra-large mounts tha
