The 2018 Shoot & Share Photo Contest
What is the Shoot & Share Photo Contest?
I had the same question not so long ago! I think I learned about the Shoot and Share contest from a Facebook Ad that popped up in my side bar… Yeah, I’m a marketer’s dream and I totally click on those things :/ When I discovered the contest I think there was about a week left to enter, I had no idea what I was doing or how the contest worked, but I thought “hey, it’s free so why not!!”
Here are some things I learned:
- It’s a photography contest open to anyone worldwide. Anyone can enter and anyone can vote. I ended up submitting 20 images out of the allowed 50. Apparently this earned me a badge of courage. Sweet.
- There are no contest judges. The “judges” are the public and during the voting period your photos are anonymous and no one knows who’s submitted what photo until the results have been released.
3. Photos come up in groups of 4 and you choose the one you think is best out of the set. Most of the voting is done on mobile devices and It’s a fast paced voting experience. In my opinion photos that do well in Shoot and Share also do well on social media as it seems to be about making a high impact first impression.
4. There are 12 rounds and people can “Heart” other people’s photos, which basically saves a photo to their favourites. You can see that someone has given you a “heart”, but you have no idea which of your photos has been favourited until the end. This creates an unhealthy dependency on checking your “heart count” to see if you still have photos hanging on in the current round. Unless of course you happen to see one of your photos appear while you're voting... (this is also addictive because the sets of 4 pop up automatically, and you think "juuuuuuust one more vote... just one more... no really this is the last. ok, I'm.... aww how can I NOT vote for that baby in a sink flinging bubbles all over the kitchen in the perfect afternoon sunlight??! no really. phone. is. off. one more?)
5. This year there were 11,351 entrants who submitted a total of 412,379 photos. By the end of round 12 over 75 million votes had been cast.
Although I entered a bit of a higgledy piggledy set of images this year, I was stoked to have 1 image make it all the way to the final round. Here are the images I entered that received badges and how they did:
Finalist in the Category 'Emotion and Excitement' - 8,800 Entries
Top 10% and Top 20% in 'Birth & Newborn' Category - 29,560 Entries
Top 10% in Family Portraits Category - 26,963 Entries
Top 20% in Babies & Toddlers Category - 28,425 Entries
Top 20% and Top 30% in Kids Category - 35,570 Entries
Top 30% in Lifestyle & Documentary Category - 19,330 Entries
For me it was inspiring going through the voting process and seeing what photographers around the world are creating. All of the Shoot and Share entries and competition winners can be found on the Shoot and Share website.