Entrant Beware: Photography Contests
You may be deluged with requests to enter photo contests — many offering prize money and the promises of exposure once you submit and win. The right photo contest that matches your marketing plan can indeed provide valuable exposure, a line on your CV, and of course satisfaction that your work is recognized.
These contests often require you to give up valuable and important rights in addition to the entry fees. Before entering a contest, make sure you read what rights you will give up by entering or winning the contest. While you will almost certainly have to give up something, many of these contests are little more than a “rights grab” from unsuspecting photographers. Contests often try to own the copyright for submissions or provide themselves with a future (and free) license to use these images however they would like (forever!). For these overreaching contests, the simple act of submission may give them rights to your image forever and without compensation to you.
I was considering a photo contest (not a fine art contest) a few months ago to enter photos of my newborn daughter. Upon reading the terms and conditions, I realized that the act of entry into the contest (not even winning the contest) gave the company all rights in the image, including ownership of the copyright and exclusive rights. Technically speaking, I would not be legally permitted to send the image in an e-mail to her grandparents after entering it into the contest. While this may be an extreme case, many contest provide onerous terms to the photographers in hopes that nobody reads the “fine print”.
A new site run by Pro-Imaging promises to help highlight the dangers from these contests as well as providing a road map for future contests that wish to be fair to submitting photographers. This is a very new program but it will be interesting to see how it develops and whether it can shed light on the practices of these companies.
There may be times when you are willing to trade some of your rights for the potential benefits of winning one of these contest. Just go in with you eyes open so that you know what you giving up. If, say, you are environmentally-minded, you might be willing to give The Nature Conservacy the rights to some of your images so that you can enter their contest. Simply put, you need to decide whether the trade-offs of a particular contest are worth it to you.
If you know of any contests that go too far that you wish to warn others about, feel free to comment below.
- Jim Nickelson
