2018 Shoot & Share Contest

A few months back, a lady named Heather Joslyn Keys invited me to enter a contest called 'Shoot & Share.'

Here are the stats from last years contest (2017)

I had never heard of it personally, but my wife entered last year and got all the way to the finals. Here is a photo of my wife for reference! Isn't she stunning?

I signed up and entered my favourite images from 2017... You are entitled to enter 50 overall. Being a huge dumbass, I overlooked the rules. One rule was to not enter the same photo into several categories. If there was a category for the amount of times I broke this rule, I would have 100% won hands down.

I also broke the 'No Watermarks' rule with this Wedding Shot. It was inevitably quickly Disqualified.

The contest is broken up into 25 categories, from wedding photos to passion portraits... There are categories for every genre. (See Below)

Moving on, the voting began... I was instantly addicted, constantly voting and 'favouriting' my best-loved shots for inspiration. I thought this feature was cute as at the end of the competition, you actually get to see who 'favourited' some of your own images. I saw a recent stat posted that there were 81million votes... Yes you heard correctly, 81 MILLION VOTES from 160 countries... 413k images submitted overall! Thats how big this contest is.

Here are the full stats!

The stat that shocked me the most was the amount of hours people spent voting in this contest... I told you! its addictive!!

So where did I place overall? Well... I won the groom category! lsajkgakjslkahdoihdaklbskdabsldjaops;dhalkshdoiasglkbasldhoashdas!!!!!!!! I CANNOT FREAKING BELIEVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I literally had tears when the results were announced. Its my biggest achievement in the photography industry to date.

Not only did I place first in the 'Groom Category' I also had an image place 5th... Both with the same concept... 'THE GROOM TOSS FOR THE WIN!!!!' This time, It was one of my infamous drone shots. Hows this for a different perspective?

Moving on... The bride category! I got 6th place!!!! I know right? I couldn't believe it either. What a huge honour it is to have 3 images place in the top 10.

It didn't stop there, i had 7 images overall place in the top 100... The top 100 photos overall get put into a 'fun' voting contest called 'Best of the Best' known in the facebook groups as BOB! 1 image of my daughter actually placed 101st... Missing out on BOB by 1!!!! :( but I'm not complaining, I pinky promise!

an additional 4 of my images were finalists... This means they reached the top 3% overall, and another 4 images reached the top 10%

Heres how I did overall:

Too sum up, I thoroughly enjoyed the whole contest from start to finish and have already started creating shots for 2019 contest.

Heres the rest of the images that placed 'Finalist' and above:

Massive thanks to Andrew Barlow, Heather Josyln Keys and Matthew Wheeler, along with the team BTS who take the time to make this contest possible for free.

See you next year guys.