So, I Entered a Photo Contest...

I've never really entered a photo contest before. I guess I found the idea to be a little bit intimidating - putting something out there to be judged that I'd put my heart & soul into - eek! But I'd heard about this Shoot & Share contest from some other local photographers last year, and when I found out earlier this year that submissions were open for this year's edition, decided I'd be brave and toss my hat in the ring as well - even if none of my photos made it very far, at least it would give me something to do between wrapping up my sessions and waiting on baby to be born, right?

Shoot & Share is a huge, world-wide contest that had 332, 000 images entered this year. The way it works is photographers submit photos into their specific categories (i.e. families, newborns, maternity, etc), and the voting is all peer-based - voters are shown four random images from a certain category, and they choose which photo they think is best. There are 12 rounds of voting, and each round more and more photos are eliminated. The photos that received the most votes moved on to the next round.

When the results were released a couple of weeks ago, I was so excited to find out that nearly half of the images I'd entered had made it into the top 10, 20, and 30 percent, plus one of my images had made it into the finals! Considering how many images from all over the world had been entered, I am just thrilled with my results!

Here are the images I entered that placed within the top 30 percent:

This is the image that made it into the final round: