Friday, October 22, 2010

Photography competitions, are they a rip off?

A quick question:

Are photo competitions run to help nurture up and coming photographers? Or are they just a cynical no brainer by various large companies and publications (who are supposed to support the photographic community) to make a quick buck in return for very little effort?

A case in point, having lived and worked as a professional photographer in California for the past 14 months I have become aware of PDN or Photo District News. I guess you could say it's the American version of The British Journal Of Photography.

As I’m working on a sports photography portfolio I was attracted to PDN’s current competition The Shot sports photography contest http://www.pdntheshot.com/index.shtml sponsored by Mitsubishi, Nikon and BlackRapid.

The prizes are:

GRAND PRIZE: two winners will receive the newest Mitsubishi printer to be unveiled this fall.
First place winners will receive:
•A Nikon digital camera
•A $250 Ticket Master gift certificate
•BlackRapid's new RS-Sport Strap
•A one year subscription to PDN
Professional winners will appear in PDN's January issue.
All winners will appear in an online gallery at pdnonline.com

If you break this down PDN are paying out at a maximum $250 for the ticket masters gift certificate and I somehow doubt they are paying for that. Now if you look at the cost of entering its $12 per submission for amateurs and $35 for professionals. Is it me or does something not add up here?

I know that people will say it gives the photographer good exposure, puts them in front of the people that matter. There's also the argument that the magazine will have costs setting the competition up but let's not forget that it is good publicity for the magazine not to mention the sponsors and involves very little work on the part of the magazines staff.

So why do struggling photographers have to pay so much for the chance to promote themselves to a publication that is supposed to promote and nurture up and coming photographers? Just a thought, I’m not sure that I‘ll be entering.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers