When listening to photography podcasts, it’s apparent that photography contests are deeply polarizing: some see them as effective ways to share work, while others view them as generally not credible ways of presenting it.
For myself, the act of submitting work to a contest provides a focused opportunity to review it and think about it more deliberately than is typical. I’m not often staring at one of my images and trying to determine what it is actually communicating. The act of such reflection is, in my mind, worth the cost of admission in its own right.
Over the past few months, I’ve submitted to a couple of contests. Below, organized under their respective names, I share the photos and how I described them.
RAW PHOTO FEST 2026 (OPEN CALL)
I’ve been a reader of the RAW Society’s magazines since their first issue and appreciate all the work that Jorge and Christelle are doing to build and support the community. In their open call that closed late last year, I submitted the below images as singles.
I didn’t add any description to them, aside from the geolocation by street and city, and year the image was made. I continue to think that the silhouette of the person passing above the subway remains one of the my stronger images that depicts Toronto: often anonymous, fleeting, and under construction and repair.
I also submitted a project, entitled “All Sales Final” which documents the closing days of the Hudson’s Bay Company in Canada. I described the project thusly:
Hudson’s Bay is closed as of June 1, 2025. Their stores are a key part of Canadian history and you can’t learn about Canada without learning a bit about the company obtaining a royal charter in 1670 or its role in providing goods to Canadians following Canada’s confederation in 1867. Generations of Canadians visited and purchased goods from their various outlets. It holds a deep resonance amongst many of us.
In anticipation of The Bay closing I spent some time documenting the Toronto flagship store after it had mostly been emptied of textiles and other goods. There were still people roaming looking for deals, but most of the scraps had been picked over. This series captures my experience of what it felt to wander through its flagship Toronto location just one last time, as a piece of Canadian history came to its end.
SMARTPHONE PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION 2025
On a bit of a lack, I decided to submit to the 6th Annual Smartphone Photography Competition. This was, really, because I’d taken an image that I was particularly proud of and thought that it might stand up well in a juried competition.
This was taken using an iPhone 17 Pro’s telephoto. It had a degree of depth that I thought was novel and interesting, and a bit different from a traditional travel image made in a street style.
STREET PHOTOGRAPHY BARCELONA CONTEST 2026
Most recently, I’ve submitted to a street photography contest that runs out of Barcelona and which accepts some international competitors. I provided three singles, all from different countries that I’ve been in over the past year. Differently from other competitions, I worked and spent time thinking how I’d describe the images and what I hope that they evoke.
Small newsstands remain scattered throughout Ciudad Vieja (‘Old City’), often positioned near bus stops and sustained by regular patrons moving through the area. Here, the newspapers are held behind mesh and clipped into place, presenting the media as controlled and protected—set apart from immediate access.
In that sense, the image reflects both the persistence and defensiveness of these spaces. They continue to operate as points of contact between vendors and patrons, but the conditions of that contact are guarded. Their vibrancy remains, though changed, and with it a sense that these sites endure as remnants of an earlier media culture that still persists within the city.
Airports operate as spaces of transition, where movement, waiting, and passage overlap. In this image, that condition is reflected in the structure of the scene itself. Layers of glass, reflection, and architecture compress multiple visual fields into a single frame, with figures suspended between departure and arrival.
The horizontal bands of the image stack these fields, revealing experiences that are shared yet separated. Individuals move within these strata, visible but indistinct, part of a common flow yet isolated within it. The result is a scene that holds multiple spaces at once, mirroring the dislocated experience of transit.
Pedestrians move through the frame in intersecting paths, their trajectories briefly aligning without ever converging. Several figures are absorbed in their phones, their attention directed away from the shared space they occupy. The scene suggests a choreography without coordination—each individual moving according to a private rhythm.
Light and architecture further isolate the figures, carving them out from one another even as they pass in close proximity. What emerges is a form of urban coexistence defined not by interaction, but by parallel presence—together in space, yet separate in attention.
Closing Thoughts
I wasn’t successful in having my work accepted into the RAW Society festival taking place in May. I’m not entirely surprised, given the quality of work they regularly feature and their focus on documentary-style images. But it felt good, nonetheless, to just practice submitting materials in the first place.
I’m still waiting to hear back on the other two contests. But even if I’m unsuccessful, the process of critically assessing my work—and increasingly thinking more carefully about what the images actually present—is, I think, a positive development in my photographic practice.
Excited Pixels 