What Judges Look for in Wildlife Photography Competitions

Photography Tips  •  Wildlife Photography

Isn’t it frustrating when you participate in wildlife photography competitions but never find your name on the winners’ list? You must wonder about the parameters on which judges evaluate the submissions. In today’s insightful video, award-winning photographer and photography judge Janine Krayer shares five great wildlife photography contest tips and outlines the common mistakes that photographers make in competitions.

Photography is subjective, meaning not everyone will have the same feeling toward a particular artwork. We don’t recommend taking Krayer’s tips as gospel truth. Rather, her tips will help you to choose your best image to submit in competition and to narrow down your selection.

“At the end, it is most important that you like your image as it is, and no one can tell you not to.”

Krayer shares quite a lot of helpful tips regarding a judge’s expectations. She sheds light on the mistakes that many wildlife photographers make when composing an image. She also emphasizes the importance of negative space and cropping. She adds that it is not wrong to crop the animal, as long as it doesn’t seem accidental. It has to be intentional and the crop has to make sense.

Also, we can get rid of many distractions with cropping. But if the distraction is right behind the subject, cropping might not help. The only time to help is before you press the shutter release: ensure that there aren’t any distractions in the background or immediate foreground.

“Your background is just as important as your subject itself.”

Krayer also talks about some of the post-processing mistakes that photographers generally make. She shares some insightful tips on detail adjustments, noise reduction and sharpening. She also demonstrates how using local adjustment tools can be a better alternative to fine-tune your images.

We really hope that you’ll keep Krayer’s tips in mind when submitting your images to the next wildlife photography competition. These tips will help you out for sure to a great extent.