Competition Tips

BIPP members should also read Paul Wilkinson’s “A Judge’s Eye” which is available in the members area.

Enter images that strangers will immediately respond to. Understand that images you want or think should do well just might not. Your personal affinity to an image (connection to the subject, your memory of the shoot, etc.) isn’t something a judge can see.

Don’t bore the judges. Impact matters. Can’t choose between some similar images? Don’t use the judges to pick for you – repetitive, overly similar images kill impact (and the impact on first viewing is massively important).

Don’t break the rules, especially the category-specific rules. We would prefer to transfer an image to another category than penalise the scoring, but other competitions may be less flexible.

Some competition categories allow some overlap – e.g. portraits always fit in portraits, but commercial categories can often accommodate commercial portraits. If you are a commercial  photographer, you may feel that some portraits could work in either category. Similarly, portraits shot at a wedding are not excluded from the portraits category.  If you feel you have the option to enter an image in multiple categories, consider how the Judges might respond to viewing it in the context of the category. Playing the categories is part of the competition game – get it right and you can be rewarded, get it wrong and you’re penalised.

Let the image breathe – leave room in the frame.

Contradiction: crop hard with intent for impact.

Images destined for print generally need extra space in the frame – trimming and matting can bite off what you considered adequate space.

Sports/ events – crop to impress the judges – we don’t need editorial flexibility, we want impact (lose the distractions).

Landscapes – you have no excuse for a skewed horizon.

Architectural & Interiors: verticals should be vertical.

Judges will always spot dust spots. Check your skies and studio background using the “visualise spots” setting in the healing tool in Lightroom Classic (or Camera Raw in Photoshop).

Judges will spot cloning errors. Check the edge blending and make sure you haven’t introduced a repetitive pattern.

Don’t over-sharpen. Sharpening halos are obvious. For most of us, images from modern cameras and lenses are plenty sharp without adding extra sharpening.

Wildlife: sharpness is important, but over-sharpening is costing you points. Worth stressing because this is a massively common image fault with this category.

Distractions in the frame don’t help. Sharp and bright objects draw the eye. Hint: view your image upside down – is your eye drawn to somewhere you don’t expect/intend?

Objects cropped at the edge of the frame generally feel untidy and distracting.

Portraits: is the face the brightest part of the image? If it’s not, should it be? (or should whatever is brighter be darker?)

Portraits: consider if the frame benefits from the extra width/height of a 3×2 crop. A 4×3 or 5×4 crop will offer a little more room in the frame (back to the “let it breathe”) or lose something that’s not adding any value.

Take care not to lose detail in highlights and shadows. But be pragmatic about it – specular highlights don’t have detail and there is a limit to where judges want to see shadow detail. Tip: offer a judge a large very bright or very dark area and you’re begging them to look for detail (make sure they find it). 

Perception matters. Judges can only judge what they see – they don’t know that “dust spot” is actually a bug that’s out of focus or that “cloning artefact” is actually in the original file. If it can be perceived as something that might be a flaw, consider fixing it (it doesn’t matter that the judges can get it wrong, just don’t let them if you can help it).

• 4th August 2026 – Initial publication