There are tons of photography contests nowadays – it doesn’t matter if you are a professional photographer or an amateur, you can easily find one that suits your skill level and interest. By entering photography competitions, you can hone your skills or even win big – some offer cash prizes, camera equipment, or showcase your work. Many of these contests have a low entry fee, and are available to anyone.
If you are interested in participating in this contest in 2023, check out the following!
1. Monochrome Photography Award
Do you mostly shoot in black and white? This is the most suitable competition for you!
It is a platform where both professionals and amateurs can take their shots among a sea of a worldwide community of ambitious and creative photographers to win cash awards and the opportunity to showcase their work to an international audience.
At the Monochrome Awards, professional entry can count on a prize of $3000!
When it comes to categories, these are your choices:
- Abstract
- Architecture
- Conceptual
- Fashion / Beauty
- Art
- Landscape
- Natural
- Naked
- Photojournalism
- Photo manipulation
- Portrait
- Road
- Wildlife
Visit the website here for more info on the 2023 awards!
2. Taylor Wessing Photography Portrait Prize
The Taylor Wessing Photography Portrait Award is a prestigious photography award celebrating the best in contemporary portrait photography.
The National Portrait Gallery is seeking entries for its annual Taylor Wessing Photography Portrait Prize.
Last year the winner of the competition received £15,000, with a second prize of £3,000 and a third prize of £2,000.
Check out their website here for more information on the upcoming 2023 competition.
3. ND Award
That ND Award is another popular international photography competition available to any photographer. It also has many categories available, including fine art and nudes, which are not very common for public photo contests.
Categories are in two sections: Professional and Unprofessional.
There is no limit to the number of individual images or series of images that each photographer can submit. The winner of the professional section receives the title “ND Photographer of the Year”.
You can check out their website here for the latest info on the 2023 awards.
4. International Landscape Photographer of the Year
If you prefer landscapes to portraits, we’ve got you covered too!
This contest was founded 6 years ago, and is still quite popular.
Each contestant can submit up to 4 images. The judges rate the images between 1 and 100, and they select the top 101 images and move on to a second round of judging.
You can check out their website here for the latest information on the 2023 contest.
5. Amateur Photographer of the Year
This content is great for those who are new to the world of photography.
The Amateur Photographer Magazine invites amateur photographers from around the world to enter its annual competition for a chance to win monthly prizes, magazine exposure and the title ‘Amateur Photographer of the Year 2023’.
There are 10 monthly rounds to participate in, and great there is even a youth APOY competition for ages 13-21!
You can check out their website here for more information on the current contest.
6. F-Stop Magazine
F-Stop Magazine is an online photography magazine featuring contemporary art from established and emerging photographers. The magazine runs a photo contest available to anyone – you must submit up to 12 photos of one work along with a statement of your project.
While this contest doesn’t award cash prizes, it can help younger photographers gain exposure — another great one for fine art photographers to get involved in.
You can check their website here for the latest information.
7. Life Framer Photography Prize
Life Framer is a well-known platform for showcasing contemporary photography.
Currently, they have 3 contests open:
- Nightlife – deadline is January 31, 2023
- Animal Kingdom – deadline is February 28, 2023
- Colors – deadline is March 31, 2023
More information about the current competition can be found on their website.
8. Lens Culture Street Photography Award
This is the perfect opportunity for street photographers to showcase their work! You can enter a single series or 5+ images, and you can add a professionally written review of your posts for an additional $15.
More information on the current competition can be found on their website here.
9. Annual Photography Award
The Annual Photography Awards invites entrants to the fourth edition of this international photography contest.
The Annual Photography Awards offers cash prizes, trophies and recognized awards to participating winners. The certificates and awards are available as digital downloads supported by the Annual Photography Awards.
- Grand Prize: $2,500 cash for the overall winner
- Category Winners: $500 for each of the 5 category winners
There are 5 categories to choose from – architecture, fine art, nature, people and special.
Learn more about the current contest here.
Some Tips for Photo Contest
Get Some Feedback About Your Photos First
This one is self-explanatory, but in any photo competition, you have to pull out the big guns with your best photo entry to win. For this reason, it’s a good idea to put your work in front of other photographers who can offer honest critiques. For that, we recommend the Light Stalking Shark Tank, but anywhere you can get quality critiques from experienced photographers is a great start.
Check the Rewards
Each highly rated photography contest will determine what the winners will get in terms of prizes. Sometimes praise is enough if the photography contest is well known, but other times the best photo might win some valuable prizes.
Read Terms
This follows from the previous point, but you need to read the entry requirements carefully. You should make special reference to copyright claimed by the organizers – you don’t want to give away your images for free, and “combat rights” are a bit of a problem between less scrupulous competitors. Free-to-entry competitions tend to be worse, but even paid competitions should be scrutinized.
How to Win a Photography Competition
Winning a photo prize is a huge topic and will require some of your best photography, but one approach we’ve seen reap huge rewards is to analyze contest-winning photos from past years. One person who has won numerous photo prizes over the years is a member of the Australian photographic community, and fine arts photographer, Adam Williams, and he has done it with both color and black and white images.
Adam has won Landscape Photographer of the Year, Professional Photographer of the Year and New Photographer of the Year in his native Australia.
He has also spent a lot of time analyzing previous photo competitions to see what types of images tend to win (not to mention taking many nature trips for his stunning landscape shots). The results that followed were outstanding, with more competitions won than anyone we know. What’s more, the people he teaches tend to have very impressive win-to-submission ratios.
Adam’s course on how to win a photo contest is well worth reading and might earn you some prizes. It’s not free, but the student output speaks for itself.
Take a look here.
A Note About Entry Fees And Prizes At Comps
There’s a big temptation among cash-strapped photographers to seek out fee-free entry competitions, but that’s okay – we all have a budget. But remember that free entry competitions are flooded with entries that are not good for the judges and tend to affect the quality of the prizes (not to mention the prestige) of a competition. While free entry may be as far as your wallet can handle, don’t neglect anything else. As they say, free can be expensive.
Further Resources:
- Things You Should Know About Photography Contests
- What You Need To Know About The Photo Contest Before You Enter
- This Photo Contest Will Help You Grow As A Photographer
- Photo Contest Deadline
- 30+ Best Photography Competitions to Enhance Your Work