1. Follow the Rule

While you may have an amazing image to enter, if you don’t take a few minutes to read and follow the rules, the judges will discard your entry without a second thought because they have a lot of other images to judge where photographers cared enough to try to make the judging easier by following the rules. If you don’t understand a rule, ASK!

2. Stay on Topic

No one ever won a cat photo contest by entering a photo of a dog. Enter images that fit the theme of the contest.

3. Focus

A huge killer of photo contest entries is out of focus images. While deliberate soft focus works for some images, careless blurry blobs do not win contests.

4. Image Size

Bigger is better…as long as you stay in the rules. If a contest allows entries up to 8×10 then enter an 8×10 instead of a 4×6.

5. Look at Past Winners

If the contest has been run before, or a contest has been judged by the same group, look at previous winners. Judges have preferences (they are still human, contrary to popular belief) and certain contests have preferences. Some contests almost always choose the “artsy” image while others go for “photojournalist” images. Every contest and every judge has preferences.