After an extended absence from the online space, veteran photographer Zack Arias is back, and he's offering some advice to photographers who are frustrated that they aren't winning any of the photo contests that they've entered into.
It began with an email one morning. The link in it led to the work of one hundred fifty photographers. I had 1,500 images to judge for Focus Photo, a s**t ton of looking to get it right. It wasn’t going to be easy to hold it all in my mind, to remember why I was making the decisions I was making.
In late 2017 Sabine Meyer, the Photography Director of the National Audubon Society, approached me to join the jury for their annual photography awards contest following an introduction by wildlife and conservation photographer Melissa Groo.
I write a version of this story every year around this time: photo contest result time. And every year, it’s addressing the same grousing and whining and complaints about everything from non-diversified juries to images being too newsy or not newsy enough.