These are some of the ongoing photography competitions I considered joining:
1.) World Photography Organisation
3.) BJP International Photography Award
But I chose to participate in the lensculture competition because the work I have done fits the theme of the competition.
Evidence of preparing work
For the lensculture competition, I really wanted to shoot something that’s documentary/photojournalistic style because that is the photography area I am most interested about. It was very timing that there was a Brexit Betrayal protest that was happening and so I decided to go and capture the event.
I took a lot of photos during the day and I do my photo culling on Lightroom as well as all my editing. I went through all my shots one by one and rated 5✫✫✫✫✫ to the ones I see that has potential to be submitted as my official entry/entries.
I then filtered it so it’d only show my rated photos.. I edited them all in black and white – the reason is because there were too many colours in one pic and so I think the best way to deliver the message of the photo is to cancel out all the colours. In that way, the viewer will only be able to really just focus on the composition and overall story of the photo.
After editing them all in black and white, there were a couple of photos that really stood out for me but I managed to just choose my best 5.
I could not decide which one to submit so I did a poll on my instagram, asking my followers some help. By this time, I changed my mind and only wanted to let them choose my top 3 favourite. Here is how it went:
It was the first and last option that got the most votes.. but a lot of people private messaged me and told me that they really liked the message of the second photo.
I thought the poll would help me decide which one to submit but because of the response that I got from the people who participated in my poll, I got confused even more and so I decided to submit 5 entries!
So these are my 5 entries for the visual storytelling awards 2019 by lensculture
Also another reason why I decided to submit 5 entries is because I’d really like to get a feedback from the professionals, judging the competition.
This competition finishes on December 19, hence the results will not be known until 2019 and most feedbacks will be sent around April 2019.
Self evaluation
I have always been drawn to Photojournalism and documentary photography. Hence, for my entries for this competition, I decided to document the recent Brexit Betrayal Rally which happened last December 9, 2018. The protest was a really good situation to photograph as I was able to capture photos that I am happy to submit to the competition.
I was very challenged about this work not only because it was my first time to attend a rally and didn’t know what to expect, but it was also my first time photographing one. One of the challenges I faced was composing my shots, I was super challenged with that because small composition change can really change the story of a photograph and many times I struggled composing my shots because there were too many people and too many things happening all at once, it was a pretty overwhelming place/situation to be at.. but on the good side, I was really able to challenge myself – to create a story in a snap and to try and find my own style in photographing these kinds of situation.
During editing, I was confused whether or not to edit my photos in black and white or leave it coloured. I have tried editing it in both but I ended up deciding to edit all my shots in black and white. The reason for this is because I just really want to let the viewer see the ‘details’ of my photos, in that way they can focus more on the story.
During editing, I marked my best 3 photos but I could not decide which one to submit. So to help me decide, I did a poll on my Instagram and Facebook story where I asked my followers some help. The total results made me even more confused because the 3 photos pretty much received the same amount of votes. I am glad I was able to use the social media platform because it also helped me expose my work and was able to get a good amount of engagement from fellow photographers and photography lovers.
Eventually, I decided to enter 5 photos to the competition. One of the reasons why is because I want to get feedbacks from the professionals. In this way, I am able to better my work next time, especially this is one of the type of photography I want to pursue.
Though this was just a very quick project, I still learned a lot from this experience. One of which was I learned that in situations like that, I don’t need to put so much pressure on myself trying to find the perfect composition and kept shooting – hoping that I’ll capture a good, well-composed photo. I realised that it was more effective to really just observe first, and when you see a great ‘story’ unfolding, and then you can start approaching/photographing the happenings.
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