Photo Contest?

Just a suggestion but how about a sticky that people can post legitimate external photo competitions? (As long as it's not spam.)

I guess some people would be in favour of this and others against it.
 
The staff might want to avoid a proper sticky thread simply on the basis that TPF can't validate the competitions and would not want to be held accountable should someone get stung by a competition that looks legit but is (infact) not.
Still nothing to stop us making the thread anyway :)

For myself I dislike the competitions that charge you an entrance fee - especailly if they let you make multiple submissions to the competition. Firstly - to my eye - they are not competitions so much as an image harvesting method (in some but not all cases) and are also (in all cases) purly a money making scheme and more like a pyramid scheme than anything else. Its just not the right idea by my way of thinking.

Also the most important thing for anyone entering a competition is to check the terms and conditions for the competition with regard to image rights (and this goes for big time competitions as well as smaller ones - heck even the BBC have had image grab competitions in the past). You do not want to enter a competition which gives the holders a royalty free any usage rights for your submitted photos. That is taking away your image from you as well as any possible income from that image - its losing you that image to that company and giving them free stock images (if they charge an entrance fee as well its a win win situation for them and a lose lose one for 99% of entrants - barring of course the 5 or so winners).
Most will take usage rights for promotion of the competition though and that is fine (it lets them show your image if it wins ;)).
The only times I would waver from this is if the company is a charity that I sympathise with and who are not that rich (big charities will often have well over enough funds for image investment); or a local competition by a smalltime group of some sort (say your local church or wildilfe centre for example). Its a judgement call in these cases and its up to you - just make sure your not just giving away your photo on the offchance of a win - most times its not worth it
 
For myself I dislike the competitions that charge you an entrance fee

If you changed "that charge a fee" with the words "any", you would have exactly what I feel. Most are a waste of time. There are no free lunches and for the small prizes that you win, trust me, they make WAY MORE profit off either selling the pics or picking up entrance fees, or both.

Most of the time, even the winners are "friends" of the board management, and are there to toot their own horns to make them look good and sucker more people.
 
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Photo Contest - Asia Without Borders 2009
 

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