Shoot & Share Photo Contest

If you’ve been around for a while, you might remember me talking about the Shoot & Share Contest in the past. (If you’re curious, you can go back, read my thoughts, and see my results from 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, and 2015)

2014 was the year I discovered the Shoot & Share Contest and entered for the first time. I’ve been a loyal supporter ever since and entered images every time they’ve had a contest. I’ve watched as the Contest and the community surrounding it have grown by leaps and bounds.
To give some context: in 2014, approximately 26,000 images were entered into the Contest, and in 2020, over 600,000 images were entered. That’s a staggering number.

Unfortunately, the 2020 Contest got tangled up in some unfortunate controversy. It’s a long story that doesn’t deserve the space to be delved into here, but after the 2020 Contest was over, many of us in the community truly wondered if it would ever return.
And when 2021 rolled around and things were silent on the Contest’s end, we all just kind of assumed that it was the end of an era.

It was sad. Like I said, I’ve been entering this contest since 2014 – long enough that it has become a part of my regularly scheduled programing.

Needless to say, when 2022 arrived and the Shoot & Share Contest miraculously revived and was announced – I was super excited. Gathering images to submit was harder than ever – I mean, choosing just 50 images from the past year to submit into the Contest is challenging enough, but since there was no Contest in 2021, I had two year’s worth of images to pull from! I painstakingly whittled my selections down and the Contest began.

The “atmosphere” surrounding the Contest was definitely different this year. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if the Contest will ever 100% get back to the size and celebration it once was. Once upon a time, there was an overload of hype around the Contest, with each new round, with each set of winners announced – it was a big deal. And, that “celebration mode” just was not there this year.
Overall, the contest was much smaller – only about 117,000 images were entered (so, still larger than the first year I took part, but nowhere near as large as in 2020).
It was kind of sad. There were a lot of little issues with the Contest that had a lot of photographers really frustrated, it was run by a much smaller team of volunteers than in years past, things slipped though that never should have, it was just a bummer when compared to the “glory” the Contest had once reached.

Looking forward, I hope that if the Contest comes back next year, that they can iron out all the wrinkles and really begin to build the hype & excitement back up again. It truly is an incredible concept and revolutionary way of presenting a photography Contest!

Anyways – I did better this year than I ever have before.
In fact, after the disappointment that my 2020 results were – I was (and still am) quite shocked at how well some of my images did!

The following are my images that “placed” – I had 4 end up in the Top 100 of their categories, 6 images named as “finalists” (which is the top 500 of each category), 1 image in the top 10%, 2 images in the top 20%, and 3 images in the top 30%. I’ve had images place in the “finalist” spot before, but I’ve never cracked the Top 100 before, so seeing that was extremely gratifying!