This is how to impress photo competition juries, says top judge Christie Goodwin

It’s very important that you capture something that you like, and that you don’t start copying something else that you’ve seen. Because once you do that, you lose the essence of the picture. 

So capture something you really love – if you’re passionate about shooting birds, shoot birds; if you’re passionate about squirrels, shoot squirrels; or if it’s photographing houses, then go where your passion lies. 

If you have the passion for something then you will be able to capture the soul of it; this is the thing that will be expressed in the picture and people will be able to see the passion in the picture. 

Of course you have to be careful – the image has to be sharp, there are some little technical details that you have to keep in mind – but overall it is the impact the whole picture has on the viewer. 

When we judges stand over the pictures, there are pictures that you’re drawn to immediately, that just capture your eyes, because of the coolers or sometimes because of the composition – perhaps there’s no one straight line – but something that draws you in immediately. 

And that’s what you need to have in your picture, something that captures the viewer when they look at it. You have to seduce the viewer, basically, and you can best do that with something that you’re passionate about. 

The competition gets a lot of entries [there were over 600,000 last time], so there is a pre-selection process, but about 200-300 pictures are left over from that which we then look at. 

The jurors will have common favorites and those are then picked out. Then we will start talking, “Why is this our favorite, what draws us in, is this actually worthy of being the best one?” 

We have discussions and sometimes when you hear somebody else’s view, you might change your mind about the picture. Sometimes these discussions can be quite intense, but always positive… it’s never like an argument but sometimes we have very interesting debates! 

Well, I often say “I wish I had taken that picture.” But that’s just me – there are some winning photos that I sometimes feel I could never have taken. 

‘Frozen Lighthouse’ [by Manfred Voss, the Landscapes category winner in the 2021 CEWE Photo Award] is a fairytale picture, and the minute I saw it I was like “Wow!“ 

After we had done the selecting – you don’t know anything about the photos beforehand, and only got to hear the story about the shot afterwards – we discovered that he went to the location very early in the morning, in the cold, and sat and waited for that moment. 

I remember thinking that I could never have done that, but he’s passionate about it; he goes to that area all the time and shoots there a lot and that really shows in the picture. He knew what he was doing and he knew what he was waiting for.

It has to start with shooting what you’re passionate about. Shoot what you really love, and not about what will win a competition, and then the pictures will speak for themselves. 

• Shoot what you’re passionate about – don’t shoot for the judges.
• Try to have photos that are clear and crisp because that’s what attracts the eye – you want to be sucked in.
• Tell a story – and remember that you don’t have to travel anywhere exotic to be able to tell a story with a photograph.