Top Tips for a Winning Entry in the Photo Expo

So you want to enter a photo into the upcoming photo exhibition but you worry about the quality of your photos? Fear not I am here to help!

First I’d like to tell you a secret… anyone can take good photos!

Seriously, the only difference between a novice and an accomplished photographer is lots of practice, and some tips and tricks. The more terrible photos you take, the better you get!

It’s not about the camera, it’s about the photographer.

I’m not going to lie and say gear is never important, as you need different lenses for telephoto or macro images but it certainly isn’t the most important thing.

You can take an exhibition-worthy photo with your phone. We have had many winning exhibitors who took their shots with their phones.

Below are some tips for taking photos that will make an impression on the judges, plus some really good videos with excellent tips and links to Nigel Bewley’s tutorials.

One note, there are only 24 winning spots available for the exhibition, so not everyone will get included. This isn’t because your photos aren’t good necessarily, it’s just the fact that the judges can only pick 24 and sometimes someone will have a better story or a more compelling subject.

This is not a reason to give up though because the best way to never place is never to enter!

So to illustrate my tips I am using my photos; my blogger’s privilege just to illustrate the tips. Anyway, most don’t qualify (not that I can enter) as they weren’t taken within the Borough of Ealing. Many of these tips are guidelines and not absolute rules as sometimes rules can and should be bent or broken, just do it with intention.

Tell a Story

This is a big one in terms of the exhibition.

A big part of the selection process is reading the stories that come with the photos. But the photo itself should also play a part in telling the story; actually, it’s important!

There are four examples below.

A very acrobatic bird, is it trying to get food? Is it just having fun? What is the story?
The second is a fledging Rook being a monumental pain in the you-know-what to his poor mother, everyone can sympathise with that story!
Then there is the Pied Wagtail sitting on the nuclear power plant sign. What story does that tell?
And lastly is a Kite that thinks it’s an Osprey catching things out of the lake, it would have been better if I had captured him hitting the water but I didn’t. Birds irritatingly do not care about the timing of your photos because they are jerks. But unusual or uncommon behaviour is always interesting and makes a good story to share.

Try New Things!

Sometimes you are stuck in your back garden, or the weather is horrible, or you are just bored with the same old pictures. Mix it up! There are several things you can do to shake up your photos and get your creative juices flowing.

There are four examples below:

Go small! Most cameras can go at least a little macro and many phones have a macro setting. There are entire worlds living in your back garden and they are fascinating and cheaper than a holiday!
Is the weather foggy and dull? Look for something interesting like raindrops on spiderwebs or spooky trees in the fog.
Also, go low or go high. I often forget this as I’m old and if I go low, I may never get up again but I do try! I got as low as I could to capture the reflection in this puddle without ending up in the puddle; I’m dedicated but not that dedicated to my photography!
The last was a damselfly chilling on a leaf above me and I thought it made a cute and unusual shot, and something different to my roughly 7 billion other damselfly shots.

Composition

Focal Point

Humans are weird. With our own eyes, we can look at the beautiful chaos of nature and be entranced and delighted. But take a photo of the exact same thing and… nada, it just looks like a very non-entrancing and not delightful mess.

I think it’s because of binocular vision and our eyes have a greater dynamic range or something. All you need to know is you need a focal point in a photo or your eyes don’t know what to look at so they give up and go find something else to do. Even landscapes need something for the eye to settle on, more on that further down.

In some way, you want that focal point or subject, to stick out. The best way is to keep the composition simple, just a hummingbird and her flower. There are several ways to simplify your background, but explaining the depth of field and aperture is beyond the scope of this blog so your best bet is to just move around until you get the cleanest background you can. A quick tip: I was using a telephoto lens on my DSLR which blurred the background. So if you are using your phone try a telephoto lens option if you have one because you can’t change the aperture and it will probably look better than the AI blurring the background. Let me know how it works.
Second, take advantage when a lone swan just happens to swim by on a dark lake in winter with interesting twisted trees in the background. If a subject is highly contrasted against the background, that will probably make a good shot.
Thirdly take photos of adorable butterflies that look like tiny ponies with wings. Make sure you leave space in front of his wee sweet face as this makes them look into the scene and not out of it as that moves your eyes out of the photo and it looks weird and cramped. If you don’t get the composition perfect in the camera because butterponies and other animals are fleeting and quick, you can crop your photo to make the composition work.
Lastly, you can use complementary colours to make a subject stand out like with this leaf and moss.

“Rule” of Thirds

I put rule in quotation marks because I think it’s more a guideline rather than a hard and fast rule, as shown in these four examples.

Generally, the guideline of thirds is dividing a photo into thirds horizontally and vertically. Then keep typically the focal point on or very close to one of the intersections of the lines, and avoid the edges or middle e.g. like the butterfly’s eye or Orion in images 1 and 2 below.
Many cameras and phone cameras come with an option to overlay the grid over your viewfinder or screen, and post-processing software also has a grid option you can use while cropping.
Now there are times when centring your subject is the right thing to do, especially if you want to highlight symmetry or it just makes sense. You’ll know when you see it. (Images 3 and 4)
I’ve rarely put a subject at the edges of the frame but there are times when I’ve offset my subject and not strictly adhered to perfect thirds as it just didn’t work, and the photo looks fine. This is why it’s a guide to help compose a shot, not an absolute rule.

Leading Lines

So leading lines are more of a landscape thing. They lead the eye around the photo as many times a landscape might not have a single focal point.

See the four examples below:

This first photo is using the easiest leading line there is a path or road. I like this one because it first leads you to the left where you see two people looking at something, it then leads you off to the right where the rest of the people are walking into the background. I also like this example because the two groups of people balance the photo nicely.
Okay so this one is a path too but besides leading you into the photo it curves to match the headlands in the background which makes a pleasing composition
This landscape has a focal point but it also has a leading line in the water in the foreground. It has a nice “S” curve that points to the gate which then leads you further into the photo to the rainbow land in the distance. I’m pretty sure that’s where the butterponies live.
This last one isn’t really leading lines but it’s more about layers. The sea and sky are layers of colours that are found in the focal point of the chalk cliff and the cloud’s texture mirrors the texture on the cliffs. It is dreamy and soft and gives the landscape a slightly abstract painterly feel.

Light

The two photos below are of the same Dunnock, taken a few seconds apart.

Why did I take the second shot? Because the sun came out for a brief second and lit the bird. While the difference isn’t huge, it is important. Light helps increase contrast, makes a stronger eye light, and improves the colours. Obviously, in the wild, you can’t control the light but pay attention and take advantage when the sun deigns to grace us with its presence. Good light is what separates “meh” photos from the really good ones!

Here are four more tips on light:

Backlighting is a nice way to separate a subject from the background and can highlight things like a Hummingbird’s tongue! Why is she sticking it out? I have no idea but it’s unbearably cute!
Golden Hour is otherwise known as the early morning and late afternoon light when the sun is low in the sky. If you can, take your photos at these times of the day for the best light. There is also blue hour, which is right before morning golden hour and right after evening golden hour that is good for cityscapes and certain wildlife, as it is light enough to still get photos but dark enough for the animals will be out and about.
Autumn and Spring light are also fabulous because it is like having golden hours almost all day because the sun is lower in the sky. It’s so brilliant it can make you love Spiders. I mean I already love Spiders but look how magnificent he looks in his golden glow below!
Going back to busy landscapes, light can help give them structure and form and actually look like something that isn’t just a mass of tree branches. Imagine this photo with no light, nothing would stand out and everything would look flat. While it’s still quite a busy photo, the light gives it depth and you can actually make sense of the scene.

Don’t Overdo Your Postprocessing!

Lastly, don’t make your photos visible from space.

If you are shooting JPG, the camera has done the post-processing for you and further editing might make it look really weird. If you shoot RAW, make sure you don’t get carried away with the sliders in Lightroom or whatever software you use.

It is easy to overdo it when you have been looking at an image for an hour. Best go and get a cup of tea, then come back, look at the photos critically, and then more than likely turn the saturation, vibrance, clarity, and sharpness down a few notches, and pull back on your vignetting. This includes overdoing the HDR that is well out of fashion and looks terrible.

Don’t worry we have all been there, my early Instagram photos are super cringe!