Entered Portrait Prize...

Today, I took in my entry for the National Portrait Photographic prize, and dropped it off to the London College of Communication. This year was the first time you could register and pay online, which made the process all so much more smoother.

Entry was £16 a photo - so I stuck with only entering one. The woman collecting in the photos had a humongous list of entrants - they usually get about a good 5,000 - that’s about £80,000!

Things I have noticed about the exhibition:

A portrait of a famous person usually features in the exhibition but never wins (which is fair enough - how many celebs do you know?)
A few well known photographers feature every year - but as stated before don’t win if it is a famous person in photograph
The odds of a well known photographer versus an unknown/amateur winning is split evenly
Entries are mostly colour
High percentage of people who feature in the exhibition have at some point in their lives have studied photography in some way i.e. degree.
Usually the shot entered is an unexpected shot at the end of a commission or caught by accident by the photographer just happening to be in the right place at the right time (so it is a good idea to keep a small P&S on you at all times as you never know when you will see a great photograph!)
The exhibition does try and touch upon something topical - last year featured a photo taken in Iraq. I guarantee this year will feature a portrait of Tony Blair.

If there was a style to the type of photographs featured in the exhibition I would say that they try to capture life as is - no soft focus or anything!